Trial begins in Craigslist robberies, slaying

Daniel Cook was pretty excited about the deal he scored through Craigslist: a bright blue Yamaha Banshee all-terrain vehicle he would get for $1,000 cash and his PlayStation 3 video game console.

And so, recalled friend Daniel Fortunato, though they weren't familiar with Philadelphia and weren't sure where they were going, they and Cook's fiancee, Jessica Davis, found their way from Williamstown in South Jersey to East Walnut Lane at Hollis Street in West Oak Lane at 10:30 p.m. on June 21, 2013.

Fortunato said Cook spotted a man sitting on the steps of a Hollis Street house and "hopped out the car to meet the kid. By the time I got out of the car, they were nowhere to be seen. . . . Then I heard three gunshots."

Fortunato testified for the prosecution Tuesday in the first day of the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court murder trial of Thomas Coffee, a Montgomery County resident charged with using ads on the Internet marketplace to lure victims to be robbed.

In Cook's case, robbery became murder as the 27-year-old Gloucester County man was shot in the back as he tried to run.

Fortunato told the jury of seven women and five men that when he heard the shots, he yelled to Cook's fiancee to "call Danny's number."

As he turned the corner, Fortunato said, he heard Cook's cellphone ringing, and saw his friend face down in the street, blood pooling around him from gunshot wounds to the back and a leg, his pants pockets turned inside out.

Fortunato said he yelled again, "Jess, they shot Danny. Get back in the car." He said he then ran to her, worried that the robber would try to get the $1,000 she held for safekeeping.

Fortunato, however, said it was too dark for him to identify Coffee as the man Cook met that night.

In addition to Cook's slaying, Coffee, 25, of Willow Grove, is charged with two more June 2013 robberies in which he lured victims through Craigslist ads, and the armed street robbery of a teenager in Oxford Circle who had been walking home from a barbershop.

Criminals realized the potential of using Craigslist and other social media almost as soon as the Internet sites appeared, and Craigslist crimes continue.

Just last month, police in Raytown, Mo., urged local Craigslist consumers to meet sellers in the police station parking lot after multiple armed robberies involved victims lured through the website.

On Tuesday, Assistant District Attorney Guy D'Andrea also called as witnesses Coffee's three other alleged victims.

Jose Ocana said he had used Craigslist before and said he felt reassured because the voice on the phone not only sounded "responsible" but had a Spanish accent.

"I went for it," said Ocana, describing the early evening of June 7, 2013, the night of a meeting in front of his Emerald Street house in Harrowgate, where he was going to trade his off-road dirt bike for a street-legal motorcycle.

Moments later, Ocana said, he was on his back on the sidewalk, gun to his head, while one man went through his pockets, another climbed behind the wheel of his '96 Mazda Protege, and a third got on the bike.

"I thought it was the end of me," Ocana testified. He said he begged the robbers not to go inside his house and harm his four young children.

Ocana said he identified Coffee from a police photo array as the man who went through his pockets. Ocana identified the Latino man he spoke with as Joshua Gutierrez.

The two are the only ones charged in the robberies. Only Coffee is charged with murder and in all four robberies in June 2013.

Gutierrez, 24, was charged as the Latino male in Ocana's robbery and in the Craigslist robbery of Ben Booker on June 8, 2013. Gutierrez was sentenced in June to 25 to 55 years in prison after pleading guilty to the robberies and other crimes, including third-degree murder in the June 21, 2013, beating of his 5-month-old daughter.

Booker testified that Coffee and several other men held him up at gunpoint in the 4600 block of Stenton Avenue in Logan, stealing his Lexus, the contents of his pockets, and four guns that he had expected to trade for a motorcycle.

According to D'Andrea, ballistics tests will show that one of Booker's guns, a .40-caliber pistol, was the gun the robber used to kill Cook two weeks later.

Also testifying was Malik Bivings, 19, who identified Coffee as the gunman who accosted and robbed him on June 17, 2013, as he walked on the 1700 block of Horrocks Street in Oxford Circle.

Defense lawyer Evan T.L. Hughes did not make an opening statement to the jury. Instead, he challenged the validity of witness identifications of Coffee, arguing that their memories were tainted by photos of Coffee that ran with blanket news coverage of Cook's slaying.