By Joseph A. Slobodzian
The Philadelphia Inquirer
PORT RICHMOND, Pa. — Two Port Richmond residents told a jury Tuesday about how a volatile mix of family and neighborhood dynamics, alcohol - and a gun - exploded and ended a street melee Nov. 21, 2009, leaving a 21-year-old dead and a veteran police officer charged with murder.
In the middle of Elkhart Street stood Frank Tepper, a 16-year police officer pointing his own Smith & Wesson .357 semiautomatic pistol at a group of young men fighting some of his guests outside his rowhouse during his daughter’s baby shower.
Facing Tepper from the sidewalk, his back to the chain-link fence of the Stokley Playground, stood William “Billy” Panas Jr., fueled by a few drinks, dusting himself off from a fistfight and suddenly confronted by a gun-wielding man.
“He pointed it at everyone, he was waving it around,” Valerie Gomez, 19, told the Philadelphia jury sitting at Tepper’s murder trial. “He told everyone to back the [expletive] up.”
From Panas, Gomez said, came the dare: “What, are you [expletive] going to shoot me?”
Gomez said Panas stepped back as the shot went through his chest, said, “He [expletive] shot me,” walked a few steps, and collapsed.
Gomez and Chris Picklo, a Port Richmond friend of Gomez and Panas’, were the first eyewitnesses to testify on the first day of Tepper’s trial in Common Pleas Court.
In opening statements to the jury of eight women and four men, prosecution and defense lawyers gave starkly contrasting views of the 45-year-old Tepper: hot-tempered cop who shot and killed rather than swallow a dare, or besieged father who shot in self-defense after getting caught in a melee that erupted outside his home during a family celebration.
“Frank Tepper is a murderer!” Assistant District Attorney Michael Barry loudly told the jury in his opening. “Don’t ever let anyone tell you that 21-year-old Billy Panas deserved it.”
Barry told the jury in his opening remarks that Tepper had violated several police policies, including getting involved in an altercation involving family and neighbors, and carrying and using his gun after he had been drinking.
Defense attorney Fortunato “Fred” Perri Jr. said Tepper’s reaction the night of Nov. 21, 2009, was “reasonable under the circumstances.”
Perri said Tepper had been punched in the mouth and was being menaced by a group of young men when he pulled the trigger and killed Panas.
“You want him to think about police directives?” Perri asked in his opening to the jury. “When you have eight to 10 guys coming at you?”
Tepper, who was last assigned to the Civil Affairs Unit when he was fired after the shooting, is charged with murder and possession of an instrument of crime.
The trial resumes Wednesday morning before Judge Shelley Robins New.
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