Witnesses: Victim in pizza theft shooting had gun

It was shoot or be shot, ex-Philadelphia police Sgt. Chauncey Ellison told a Common Pleas Court jury Thursday about the 2008 West Oak Lane shooting that resulted in the death of a 20-year-old man.

After being told on the evening of Nov. 17, 2008, by his 14-year-old son that a man had punched him in the mouth and taken his pizza, Ellison and then-girlfriend Robin Fortune set out in search of the robber. They spotted him on the 1900 block of Renovo Street. But the two off-duty officers, dressed in sweats and without identification, found their way blocked by Lawrence Allen.

Allen, Ellison said, at first wanted to know why he was armed, and then offered to pay for the pizza. But later, Ellison said, Allen drew a revolver.

"He would have shot me and he would have killed me," Ellison told the jury about why he shot Allen.

The shooting paralyzed Allen and led to his death from infection three months later.

The prosecution, however, contends that Allen was unarmed and trying to make peace. The revolver, which two other witnesses said they saw, was never found.

What neither Ellison nor Fortune could explain to the jury was why two experienced officers - he for 8 years, she 11 - did not call 911 when Ellison's son, Chauncey Jr., and Fortune's son, Stephon Berry, also 14, first told them about the robbery.

Questioned by Assistant District Attorney Gail Fairman, Fortune acknowledged that police procedure calls for an off-duty officer to "be a good witness" and call 911.

"But when I left the house that night, I did not consider myself an off-duty police officer but a full-time concerned parent," Fortune said.

Ellison, 40, is charged with voluntary manslaughter, conspiracy, and related counts for shooting Allen. Fortune, 45, is charged with reckless endangerment and conspiracy. Both were later fired from the force.

Prosecution witnesses described Fortune as engaging in a loud, foulmouthed shouting match with Allen and others on Renovo Street, and urging Ellison to "pop one of these [expletive]."

Ellison testified that he only heard Fortune yell once, at the robber, a friend of Allen's named Demetrius Haywood.

Fortune testified that she never swore or urged Ellison to shoot anyone.

Under questioning by Fairman, Fortune acknowledged that "when people said they saw a loud female, that was me."