Regardless of which side you find yourself on this trial the following article is what goes on in certain sections of philly everyday, (north and west) it seems the amount of money used to get these costa nostra guys in jersey and philly could have been used to clean up this crap that happens everyday in philly
Murder witness fatally beaten; link uncertain Mike Newall, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER Posted: Sunday, January 6, 2013, 1:05 PM A witness in a murder case who later recanted was beaten to death Saturday night in West Philadelphia, police said Sunday.
Investigators are not sure if the killing was related to the murder case or if another motive was involved.
Akeel Prout, 26, was punched and stomped by six men about 10 p.m. on the 500 block of North 55th Street, police said. One of the assailants reached into the victim's pocket and took something before fleeing,
Prout was pronounced dead at 10:26 p.m. at the University of Pennsylvania.
Prout, who lived in the Wynnefield section had been a witness in the murder of Hafeezah Nurid-Din, an Overbrook mother of four and a schoolteacher killed by a stray bullet through the heart in October 2011.
According to police, Prout identified the gunman as Daniel Shelley, now 19.
Police said Shelley, seeking revenge for a shooting that wounded his brother months earlier, rode up on his bike and opened fire on a group of males.
The intended targets fled unscathed but a bullet hit Nurid-Din outside her Malvern Avenue home as she returned from a grocery.
At Shelley's preliminary hearing in February, 2012, Prout recanted, testifying he did not know Shelley and had never seen him.
He acknowledged being there, but testified he only helped put the dying woman - whom he knew in passing - into a car so a relative could take her to the hospital.
Despite the recantation, prosecutors planned to use at trial Prout's statement to investigators, which was read into the record at the preliminary hearing.
They would rather spend all this time and money for people betting and loansharking rather than people who kill each other daily
