WEST CHESTER — Testimony on Tuesday in the trial of a Philadelphia man accused of driving the getaway car after the 2006 murder of a Coatesville man centered on the days just before and after the fatal shooting.
Two witnesses — an Atlanta, Ga., man and a Downingtown woman — told the Common Pleas jury hearing the case of Jeremiah “Young” Bush that they had heard discussions about the murder of Jonas “Sonny” Suber, who was shot multiple times at his Walnut Street home.
The shooting, prosecutors say, was done at the behest of his longtime rival, Coatesville crime figure Duron “Gotti” Peoples.
In one of the conversations, witness April Lynn Brown said, Bush had told her that he and a friend “handled some business on Fifth Avenue” on the morning of Suber’s death. Later, she learned that “business” was Suber’s murder, she testified.
In another conversation, witness Victor Devalia told the jury, he had heard Peoples tell someone on a cell phone while the pair were driving home to Georgia from Coatesville to “burn the house down,” which he said referred to instructions by Peoples to shoot Suber to death. “It’s done, it’s done,” Devalia said was the reply.
Bush, 26, is charged with first- and third-degree murder and related offenses in Suber’s October 2006 death. The prosecution contends Bush is guilty of acting as an accomplice of the shooter, Eric “Stroda” Coxry, and as a participant in the wider conspiracy with Peoples and his associate, Shamone “Kadof” Woods, to end Suber’s life.
Suber and Peoples had been feuding for months ever since Peoples learned that Suber had had an affair with Peoples’ then-girlfriend.
If convicted of first-degree murder, Bush faces a mandatory life sentence.
Peoples, Woods and Coxry are all to be tried separately.
Most of the morning in the second day of testimony was taken up by Brown and Devalia, who was originally charged with being the shooter after a misidentification by Suber’s widow. He convinced police, however, that he had noting to do with the murder and told them what he knew about Peoples’ actions before and after the shooting.
Devalia testified that had driven with Peoples from his Georgia home to sell a rare pit bull to a Chester County man he knew, and that he had listened while Peoples spent a considerable amount of time during the trip on a series of cell phone calls directing Woods, whose voice he recognized from its distinctive high pitch.
The two arrived in Chester County on Oct. 20, 2006. That afternoon, Devalia accompanied Peoples to his home in Caln, where Peoples retrieved two guns — a .38 revolver and a .45 semiautomatic — from a hiding place in the ceiling of the laundry room.
While showing Devalia the .45 handgun, Peoples had told him, “This is what the big boys use ... to get the job done,” Devalia testified.
A few weeks before, Peoples had been showing off the .45, pulling the trigger repeatedly and telling Devalia, “This is going to be the boys from the barbershop,” referring to Suber, a barber, and his brother, Odell “Zelly” Cannon.
That evening, before leaving to return to Georgia, Peoples had Devalia stop at a Downingtown movie theater, where Peoples donned a fake Afro wig and left the car to meet someone.
Deputy District Attorney Ronald Yen, who is leading he prosecution in the case, has suggested to the jury that it was then that Peoples’ gave the .45 to Woods to use against Suber.
The .45-caliber semiautomatic was later determined to be the weapon Woods had used to shoot a Coatesville drug dealer he was feuding with a few weeks before Suber’s death.
Devalia said Peoples had appeared “amped up” on the return trip to Georgia and that he had had several conversations with Woods, telling him to “lay on them,” meaning to follow Suber as he made his way around Coatesville.
As the pair pulled up to Peoples’ home in Stone Mountain, Ga., the morning of Oct. 21, 2006, Devalia said, he had asked Peoples what he was talking to Woods about.
“They just life-flighted ... Hill to the hospital,” Devalia quoted Peoples as saying, referring to Suber by one of his nicknames.
“I asked him what had happened, and he said, ‘He got shot,’ Devalia quoted Peoples as saying.
Brown, who in 2006 was friends with Woods and Coxry, said she saw the pair at various times on the evening before Suber’s death.
She said Coxry, whom she had picked up in Philadelphia at Woods’ request on Oct. 20, 2006, that night had asked her to drive him in her car to a Coatesville bar, where they had met with Woods. Woods and Coxry had spoken about someone they wanted to find in the bar on South First Avenue, and Coxry had ordered her to follow a white Cadillac sedan when the man they were waiting for came out of the bar. The Cadillac belonged to Suber.
Brown said they had followed the Cadillac to a social club on the north side of Coatesville, then had tailed it as it left the city and drove into Caln. But she said Coxry had told her to break off the tail before they had returned to a house on Fourth Avenue where she had been staying.
Under cross-examination by Thomas McCabe, Bush’s West Chester attorney, Brown acknowledged Bush had not been with her and Coxry when they followed Suber from bar to social club in the city.
Testimony is to continue Wednesday.
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