Testimony beings in preliminary hearing for 4 of 5 charged in deadly North Side shooting
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — Testimony began on Friday in the preliminary hearing for four of the five defendants charged in connection with a deadly shooting in Pittsburgh's North Side over the summer.
Officers were called to Brighton Place on Aug. 7 after receiving multiple ShotSpotter alerts for several rounds fired. When first responders arrived at the scene, they found multiple victims who had been shot.
One victim, Stephone Drayton, was taken to the hospital, where he later died. Three other individuals were injured.
Four defendants — Hezekiah Nixon, Andrew Johnson, Andre Allen and Tylajae Allen — stood before a judge on Friday. They are all charged in connection with the shooting death of Drayton. Rayvon Poellnitz is also charged, but his preliminary hearing will take place at a later date.
The judge heard from detectives and witnesses and was shown surveillance video from the night of the shooting.
The prosecution called multiple Pittsburgh police detectives to the stand. One by one, they broke down surveillance footage that shows four people, who they say are the defendants, jump out of a Ford Escape on California Avenue and begin shooting toward Brighton Place, where Drayton was found dead.
The four people then took off in the vehicle as someone returned fire.
Other clips show the Ford Escape parked at a home on Davis Avenue, where one of the defendants lives, before and after the shooting, officials said. Continued testimony revealed 55 shots were fired from at least eight different guns.
Nixon, 16, was recently charged in another shooting in October that left five people injured outside a funeral service. In that case, Nixon allegedly threw a gun into the Ohio River. It was later retrieved by authorities and matched casings found at this crime scene, connecting Nixon to the crime.
His attorney, Casey White, says that's a stretch.
"They have to establish that firearm found at that location in October was somehow fired by my client back in August. And they couldn't establish the registered owner of the gun, they couldn't establish whether the gun was stolen. So again, they got a long way to go to try to piece the puzzle together of what actually took place and actually who killed that young man on Aug. 7 of this year."
The prosecution said it still has about at least one hour more of testimony to get through, including an expert witness. The hearing was continued until Jan. 4, 2023.