By Joseph A. Slobodzian
The Philadelphia Inquirer
PHILADELPHIA — In an angry and sorrowful speech that lasted eight minutes, the father and namesake of slain Philadelphia Police Officer John Pawlowski described living with the anguish of “the crime that is not over.”
Addressing the Common Pleas Court jury considering the fate of his son’s admitted killer, John Pawlowski spoke of a grief so profound that it dwarfed the loss of his wife from cancer, leaving him to raise their five children, and of a pain so searing that “I don’t trust my own sanity today.”
“Please don’t think this crime that occurred Feb. 13, 2009, is over,” Pawlowski, 59, a retired police lieutenant, said Monday. “That crime continues to this day. And if you don’t think so, spend a day or a holiday with me and my family and Kimmy and little John.”
Kimmy Pawlowski, 25, sat sobbing in the audience. She was married just months and pregnant with their son when the younger Pawlowski, 25, was shot to death responding to an emergency call at Broad Street and Olney Avenue. Pawlowski’s brother Robert, 37, a police corporal, held her close, an arm around her, he himself struggling to stay composed.
Rasheed Scrugs, 35, started his trial Thursday by pleading guilty to first-degree murder in Pawlowski’s death and adding, “I’m sorry.” On Monday, he sat hunched over the defense table, facing forward.
Scrugs’ unexpected decision to plead guilty has left the jury of eight women and four men to decide only his sentence: life in prison without chance of parole, or death by lethal injection.
The prosecutors - Deputy District Attorney Edward McCann and Assistant District Attorney Jacqueline Juliano Coelho - are expected to finish their case Wednesday.
After that, defense attorneys Lee Mandell and David Rudenstein will try to persuade jurors to spare the life of the paroled robber from West Philadelphia.
Rudenstein has told the jury there were mitigating factors warranting a life sentence, both in Scrugs’ background and the circumstances of the shooting.
In arguing for execution, the prosecutors have cited as aggravating factors the murder of a police officer in the line of duty, endangering the lives of people at the shooting scene, and Scrugs’ record of violent crime.
According to trial testimony, Pawlowski and partner Mark Klein were on patrol about 8:20 p.m. when they got a radio call about a man with a knife at Broad and Olney, outside the SEPTA transit station.
They were met there by Emmanuel Cesar, a hack cabbie, who told the officers Scrugs had roughed him up and threatened him.
Pawlowski and Klein got out of their car and ordered Scrugs, standing about 12 feet away, to remove his hands from his coat pockets.
Instead, Scrugs began firing his six-shot, .357-caliber revolver through his coat at the officers.
Pawlowski was hit almost immediately. He fired one shot into the sidewalk before Scrugs’ second shot went through an armhole of his bulletproof vest, pierced both lungs and his heart, and dropped him to the pavement.
Scrugs tried to flee but fell to the median island on Broad after being shot by Klein and Officer Stephen Mancuso.
Pawlowski’s father told the jury he was home playing cards with his girlfriend, mother, and sister when his son Robert called, “screaming that something terrible had happened” and that police would take him to Albert Einstein Medical Center.
“Even as I heard those words, I never thought the worst,” Pawlowski said.
It was only as he walked into the hospital and other officers looked down rather than meet his gaze that “I slowly began to realize how bad this was,” he said.
“I saw my son John lying there, and I hugged him and kissed him and cried. And that was the beginning of a lot of crying.”
Pawlowski called his son a “hero” who had been robbed of 50 years of life.
“My grandson is just beginning to speak and say, ‘Da-Da,’ ” he said, “and everybody in the room is trying not to hear.”
Contact staff writer Joseph A. Slobodzian at 215-854-2985 or jslobodzian@phillynews.com.
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