Man to stand trial in slaying store owner during botched robbery

A week after a botched June 18 robbery and shooting, relating what happened to a police detective, Darnell Griffin still seemed stunned that the old man would bluff.

Griffin, 21, of Francisville, told Philadelphia homicide detective Philip Nordo that he held his .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol at North Philadelphia grocer Felix Rodriguez.

"It was in his face," Griffin said. "I think he didn't believe me."

Griffin's alleged confession was the main evidence against him, and Tuesday, he was ordered to stand trial for murder in the slaying of Rodriguez, 60, in his Los Ingenitos bodega in the 2400 block of North Ninth Street.

Nordo read Griffin's June 25 statement, which detailed how the Father's Day weekend robbery went quickly and fatally awry, at a preliminary hearing before Municipal Court Judge Teresa Carr Deni.

According to the statement, Griffin and two friends he identified as Jamal "Grubby" Hunter and Kevin "Kev" Rideout went to rob the bodega about 8 p.m. that Saturday.

Assistant District Attorney Carlos Vega declined to comment on whether Griffin's alleged accomplices were in custody. Court records show no recent arrests of people with those names.

With the assailants' faces obscured with T-shirts, Griffin said he confronted Rodriguez, who was behind the counter, and demanded money.

But instead of handing over cash from the register, Griffin's statement continued, "the old man said, 'I've got something for you' " and reached below the counter.

"I blacked out and then when he came up, I started backing up and started shooting," Griffin told Nordo.

"Did [Rodriguez] have a gun?" Nordo testified he asked Griffin.

"No, that's the thing. I think he punk-faked me," Griffin replied, according to Nordo.

Griffin's statement said Rideout also had a gun that he tried to teach him to handle before entering the store.

Rideout fired one round and then accidentally ejected the pistol's ammo clip onto the floor of the grocery and ran, Griffin's statement said.

Griffin, however, admitted that his shots killed Rodriguez, Nordo said.

Rodriguez, who relatives said was planning to sell the bodega and retire, was shot six times.

The trio's circumstances did not improve. By the time he got to his girlfriend's house, Griffin said, she was in tears. Hunter had already been there, he continued, and told everything.

A few days later, Griffin's statement said, he ran into Rideout's father, who urged him and his son to surrender.

Griffin said Rideout's father did not know where his son was: "He said his homeys came and got him and we're not telling him."

In Griffin's case, authorities did not have to look hard to find him.

On June 23, Griffin was in Common Pleas Court, where Judge Adam Beloff sentenced him to 111/2 to 23 months in prison on drug and conspiracy charges.

Griffin's last words to Nordo: "I wish I never listened to Grubby."