On the evening of January 28, 2006, a group of men standing at the corner of 29 th Street and Westmont Street in the Strawberry Mansion neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania fired several shots at a car. Six-year-old Jabar Wright was struck once and left paralyzed from the neck down.
None of the other people in the car—Jabar’s grandfather, 40-year-old Benjamin Wright, who was driving; Benjamin’s 40-year-old wife, LaRhonda; or their 10-year-old daughter, Aneena—were injured.
The first call to 911 came in at 7:42 p.m., and less than an hour later, LaRhonda identified 18-year-old Donte Rollins as one of the four men on the street corner. Rollins and three others—Rollins’s 24-year-old cousin, Raheem Collins, 17-year-old Chris Powell, and 26-year-old Kevin Norris—were charged with attempted murder, aggravated assault, conspiracy to commit murder, and unlawful use of a firearm. Rollins was arrested the night of the shooting. Powell and Collins surrendered to police on January 31, 2006. Norris was arrested on February 2, 2006.
The men went to trial in Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas in November 2007. The prosecution claimed that Benjamin Wright was the target of the shooting because of previous conflicts with the defendants.
Rollins claimed he was miles away, shopping for clothing, at the time of the crime. Collins said he was a block and a half away playing video games with friends. Norris said he was at his grandmother's birthday party that evening. Powell did not provide an alibi.
LaRhonda Wright testified that she and Benjamin were dropping off two children at nearby apartments. She said she saw Powell walk up and then back down the street. Wright testified that when their car came to the corner of 29th and Westmont Streets, she gave a "quick glance" to her right and saw Powell, Norris, Rollins, and Collins. She heard gunshots and shouted, “They shooting at us.” When someone else in the car asked who was shooting, she responded, “Raheem and Donte.” LaRhonda testified she saw Collins reach down into his pants but never saw a gun in the hands of any of the four.
LaRhonda Wright testified that she had known Rollins for between 13 and 15 years and had seen him about three times a week in the area of the shooting. She also testified that she told police that “Donte and Raheem had a gun,” but when shown a copy of her statement, she admitted the statement made no mention of a gun.
She told the jury that police drove her from the hospital to a street where she identified Rollins.
Benjamin Wright testified that he knew Rollins and the three others. He testified he also saw Powell enter a house on Westmont Street in the moments before the shooting. Wright testified that he had "problems" with the men in the past because they had threatened to kill his nephew. Wright testified that he did not see the shooting.
Wright testified that he had served nearly nine years in prison after pleading guilty to murder after beating a man to death. He said the defendants were aware of his conviction. He also testified that after serving his sentence, he had not broken the law again.
Rollins’s mother, Ava Rollins, testified for the defense that she obtained security videotapes from two stores, both miles away from the shooting. One of the videos, from the Gallery Mall, was played for the jury and showed a youth she identified as Rollins. She said that he was wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt and a chain around his neck. That video showed Rollins in the store at 6:14 p.m. The second video, from a store called The Net, was not shown to the jury, although the defense presented four photographs made from this video.
Roslyn Jones, Rollins’s aunt, testified for the defense and identified Rollins in the four photographs. She said he was wearing a keychain around his neck and a gray hooded sweatshirt. She also identified him in the videotape from the mall.
Sheila Watkins, a family friend, identified Rollins in the photographs as wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt with a chain around his neck.
Marvin Matthews, who was LaRhonda's uncle, testified that he was with Collins and three other men playing video games at the time of the shooting. Matthews said they were in a house approximately a block and a quarter from the location of the shooting, that they heard the shots, and that Collins was playing a video game when they heard the shots.
In rebuttal, the prosecution called Police Officer Andrew Jericho, who was assigned to the highway patrol on the night of the shooting. He testified that he received a radio message that one of the suspects in the shooting was named Donte Rollins and that he was wearing a dark gray hooded sweatshirt and blue jeans.
Jericho said he and his partner went to the Rollins family home where he saw a man fitting that description walking up the street sometime between 8:15 and 8:30 p.m. Jericho testified that once the youth walked up to the Rollins home and began to put a key in the door, he asked for his name. When the person said he was Donte Rollins, Jericho escorted Rollins to the other side of the street while he radioed that he “possibly had somebody in custody being held for investigation.”
Not long after, LaRhonda Wright was driven to the scene, where she identified Rollins as one of the men who fired the shots at the car, Jericho testified. He said that she identified Rollins at 8:30 p.m.
Powell did not call any witnesses. His attorney said in closing arguments that Powell wasn’t involved in the shooting but may have been in the neighborhood. “Mere presence at the scene of a crime is not enough, if you even feel that he was there,” the attorney said. It was plausible that Powell had gone into a house, as Benjamin Wright testified, and then quickly returned to the street corner where the shooting occurred.
A prosecutor later responded that Powell’s argument didn’t hold water.
“I would think you can’t be merely present at a shooting,” the prosecutor said. “I may be merely present at a party. I may be merely present maybe where drugs are sold. I don’t know what’s going on. Who is merely present at a shooting, standing there? You are going to run. You are going to duck.”
The prosecutor said that although LaRhonda Wright was the only eyewitness to the shooting, this was an instance of “quality over quantity.” The prosecutor said Wright was intimately familiar with the defendants. He said Wright “knew the way they looked, the way they walked, where they hung. She knew their mamas; she knew their daddies. She knew their voices. She knew what they wore. She knew everything.”
In closing arguments, Rollins's defense attorney argued that Rollins was in the Gallery Mall and then went to The Net before going home.
The prosecution argued that the video from the Gallery Mall and the photographs from that video were inconclusive, telling the jury that if the prosecution had presented this evidence, "you'd be so mad at me, you'd be glaring at me, if I had this for identification."
The prosecutor argued that it was impossible for Rollins to be in the video and photographs because there was not enough time for him to leave the Gallery Mall (where he was recorded at 6:18 p.m.), travel to the site of the shooting (which occurred around 7:40 p.m.), travel to The Net (where the defense said he was at 8 p.m.) and then get home to be seen by Officer Jericho at 8:15 p.m. The only way Rollins could have traveled that far, that fast, was by jet plane, the prosecutor argued.
The jury began deliberating about 12:45 p.m. on Friday, November 30, 2007, and went home for the weekend after failing to reach a verdict that day. By day's end on Monday, December 3, the jury reported it was deadlocked and unable to reach a unanimous verdict. The jury asked to see the video from The Net, but the court denied that request because that video was not in evidence.
The jury returned the following day, December 4, and convicted Rollins, Collins and Powell of attempted murder and aggravated assault of Jabar, attempted aggravated assaults of Benjamin, LaRhonda and Aneena, conspiracy to kill Benjamin, and carrying a firearm without a license. Norris was acquitted.
Rollins, Collins, and Powell were each sentenced to 62½ to 125 years in prison. The Pennsylvania Superior Court denied their appeals in 2010.
In 2013, attorney Michael Wiseman and the Pennsylvania Innocence Project filed a post-conviction petition seeking a new trial for Rollins. The petition claimed that Rollins's trial defense attorney had provided ineffective assistance of counsel by failing to call alibi witnesses and present other documentary evidence, including the video from The Net as well as receipts for purchases at both the Gallery Mall and The Net.
The petition asserted that Howard Porter could have been called to testify that he and Rollins were in the video from The Net. In addition, Paris Grant and Shelton Fortune could have testified that they also were with Rollins at the time of the shooting. The trial defense attorney had receipts that showed Grant made a purchase at about 8:09 p.m. at The Net, but he never introduced them at the trial.
The defense also failed to present a receipt for a purchase by Rollins at the Gallery Mall at 6:18 p.m. While that was before the shooting, it supported Rollins's claim that he had been there and that there was not enough time for him to physically travel from the mall to the scene of the shooting and then back to The Net.
In addition, the security video from The Net showed Rollins using his cell phone, and his cell phone records showed that Rollins was on the phone at 8:01 and 8:02 p.m. Those records were in the defense lawyer's file but were never introduced at trial.
The petition further noted that the defense could have rebutted Officer Jericho's timeline with a transcript of the police radio transmissions, which showed that Jericho didn't call in his initial contact with Rollins until 8:36—not 8:15 as Jericho testified. The defense could also have called Zahir Johnson, who would have testified that he spoke on his cell phone to Rollins at 8:35 p.m.—before Rollins was stopped by Jericho. In addition, Thomas Myricks, a neighbor, could have testified that he saw Rollins walk nonchalantly past the police waiting on the street outside the Rollins home—evidence strongly suggesting that Rollins was unaware of any reason police were seeking him.
"In sum, (trial defense) counsel had the tools available to significantly bolster the alibi that was presented," the petition said. "He had Howard Porter, the phone records showing that (Rollins) was on the phone while pictured in the video with Porter. He could have called Fortune and Grant. He had the receipts. He also had the tools available to conclusively rebuff the prosecution's attempt to discredit the alibi."
The evidence showing the 21-minute difference between Jericho's claim of 8:15 p.m. and evidence that the encounter did not occur until 8:36 p.m. was of “critical importance” because it “contradicted the core argument made by the prosecution that it could not have been (Rollins) pictured in The Net video” because Rollins could not have traveled the 4.5 miles between The Net and his home in the six minutes that elapsed between Grant's purchase at 8:09 p.m. and Jericho's time of 8:15 p.m.
After the petition was filed, the Philadelphia County District Attorney's Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU) re-investigated the case. In April 2016, the prosecution agreed that Rollins’s convictions should be vacated. However, in November, Common Pleas Court Judge Rayford Means denied the petition.
Marissa Boyers Bluestine, legal director for the Pennsylvania Innocence Project, asked Means for his reasons, but the judge declined to respond and left the courtroom.
Rollins filed an appeal, joined by the prosecution, with the Pennsylvania Superior Court.
On December 20, 2016, the Superior Court vacated Rollins’s convictions and ordered him released.
The court harshly criticized Judge Means for “inexplicably” ordering hearings and calling for testimony from the original trial prosecutor, the detective, and Rollins's trial defense attorney—even though the prosecution said it would not oppose the petition for a new trial.
After calling for a hearing, Means “thereafter entered multiple continuances,” despite objections from the defense and the prosecution's statement that it would forego all proceedings in favor of a new trial.
Means went ahead with a hearing in October 2016 during which the original trial prosecutor and the detective testified and “offered no relevant information,” the appeals court said.
There was “no justification” for Means’s “multiple delays in the proceedings, arbitrary demand for testimony unrelated to (Rollins’s)...claims, or unexplained denial of the agreed upon relief requested,” the appeals court said.
Rollins was immediately released, and on December 21, 2016, the prosecution dismissed the charges.
Rollins filed a lawsuit in Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, which was settled by the city of Philadelphia in October 2019 for $900,000.
In April 2023, attorney Zak Taylor Goldstein filed a Post-Conviction Relief Act petition seeking to vacate Collins’s conviction. The petition said that the prosecution had failed to disclose a police report showing that a fifth person was a suspect in the shooting. This information contradicted LaRhonda Wright’s testimony that there were only four men on the corner.
The petition said that in October 2022, LaRhonda had recanted her trial testimony. She said that she had not seen any faces of the men. She said that one of them was dressed all in black, and because she knew that Collins liked to dress in all black clothing, she assumed it was him. “I now realize I was wrong,” she said in an affidavit. “I do not believe [Collins] was any of the persons shooting the night Jabar was shot.”
She also said there were as many as six or seven people on the corner, not just the four she accused of being involved in the crime.
At an evidentiary hearing on September 30, 2024, LaRhonda Wright testified that neither Collins nor Powell were present when the shooting occurred. She said that she had only seen Powell enter a house on Westmont Street. She said that Benjamin Wright had suggested Collins’s name to her.
LaRhonda Wright had testified at the trial that she could see the crime scene clearly because the street was well lit. At the evidentiary hearing, she testified that it was nighttime, bushes obscured her view, and she only saw a “body structure” of the person she had said was Collins.
Benjamin Wright also testified at the evidentiary hearing that he had testified falsely at the trial about his criminal activities. He said that at the time of the shooting, he was selling drugs to people who lived on Westmont.
“I sold crack,” Wright said. “[The people from the block] bought it. That’s it. Not friends. This block ... That was part of my life at the time, with them. It was. I lived it with them. But the price I paid that day changed my life.”
LaRhonda Wright's sister, Charlene Wiggins, also provided an affidavit saying that at about the time of the shooting, she called the home where Collins and the others were playing video games. Wiggins said that she spoke to Marvin Matthews, who put the phone on speaker. Wiggins said that she could hear Collins in the background during the conversation.
Moreover, three of the friends who were also playing video games provided affidavits that Collins was with them at the time of the shooting.
The Philadelphia County District Attorney's Office did not file a response to the petition but argued against granting Collins relief at an evidentiary hearing. On October 1, 2024, Judge Zachary Shaffer granted the petition and vacated Collins's conviction.
Collins was released from prison on November 5, 2024. On November 22, 2024, the prosecution dismissed the case.
On December 31, 2024, Collins filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the Philadelphia police department, including Jericho.
On September 25, 2025, Powell, represented by Jennifer Merrigan and Elie Kirshner of the Phillips Black law firm, filed a petition for post-conviction relief that drew heavily from Collins’s petition and the testimony from the evidentiary hearing. It said that LaRhonda Wright had recanted her testimony, and Benjamin Wright’s testimony provided an alternative theory to the crime.
“This case, and its lengthy history, clearly reflects the hazard of misidentification,” the motion said. “Mr. Powell is now the only codefendant who remains incarcerated based on Ms. Wiggins’ unreliable and recanted identification, under the Commonwealth’s theory that he participated in a conspiracy with his three vindicated codefendants. The new evidence completely unravels the Commonwealth’s case.”
The CIU did not file a response, but conceded in court that Powell’s convictions should be overturned based on its investigation.
On December 12, 2025, Judge Shaffer vacated Powell’s convictions. Powell was released from prison on December 15, 2025. The state dismissed the charges on January 16, 2026.
– Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 01-06-2017
Last Update Date: 02-03-2026
