Eyewitness testifies in 2008 Mantua playground killings

The 2008 trophy ceremony for the neighborhood basketball league had barely begun when people at McAlpin Playground in Mantua dove to the ground at the sound of gunfire.

"Are you all right there, boy?" said Miles Mack, founder of the X-Tra Miles Development Basketball League to curb youth violence, to a player whose body he was shielding.

For Mack, 42, those words were his last.

Seconds later, testified fellow coach Murphy Applin, the player's panicky voice called out: "Mr. Miles is not getting up."

"I thought he had a heart attack," Applin told a Philadelphia judge Monday. "It was only later that I found out he got shot."

Applin, a hulking man wearing a red T-shirt commemorating the 2009 renaming of McAlpin as Miles Mack Playground, struggled to stifle tears as he described the chaos of Sept. 11, 2008, when the man he called "my best friend" was gunned down.

Applin was the first prosecution witness to testify in the nonjury Common Pleas Court trial of Kareem Savage, 22, accused of being one of the two people who killed Mack and North Philadelphia player Darren "Shaddy" Hankins, 19, and wounded four.

Applin, questioned by Assistant District Attorney Brian Zarallo, told Judge Steven R. Geroff that from 50 to 100 people were present at the playground, at 36th and Aspen Streets, for the 10 p.m. awards ceremony that capped the playoff between teams from North and South Philadelphia.

The game had proceeded without incident, and Mack was just beginning the awards ceremony when the shots were fired behind him, Applin testified.

After a first volley, Applin said, he turned and saw two men standing over Hankins. They emptied their guns into Hankins' body and fled.

Applin said both gunmen had their hoodies cinched so tightly that only their eyes were visible.

Zarallo said no witnesses would identify Savage as one of the two shooters - the other remains at large - but Savage, then sought for another killing and arrested Nov. 30, 2008, as a fugitive, gave a statement to police admitting his involvement.

Defense attorney W. Fred Harrison Jr. made no opening statement but said afterward that more than a few people wished Hankins dead.

In addition to murder charges in the deaths of Mack and Hankins, Savage is charged with the attempted murder of four people - Terrell Spencer, 23; Mikel Hanton, 18; Douglas Mathison, 20; and Derrick Segars, 45, also a basketball coach - wounded in the barrage.

Until Savage agreed to be tried without a jury, he would have faced the death penalty upon conviction of first-degree murder. Without a jury, the judge can impose only life in prison without parole.

It is Savage's second consecutive nonjury trial. On Friday, Geroff found him guilty in the July 12, 2008, killing of Valentino Cortez Ennis, 46.

Ennis was shot to death in his Brewerytown home after getting involved in a domestic dispute involving one of Savage's relatives.