Jurors in the trial of a man charged with murdering a man during the robbery of his Kearny jewelry store were asked today if they should believe the man's co-defendants who testified after getting plea deals to lesser charges.
Jurors in the trial of a man charged with murdering the owner of a Kearny jewelry store during a robbery were asked today if they should believe the man's co-defendants who testified after getting plea deals to lesser charges.
The question was posed during closing statements by defense attorney Scott Finckenauer, whose client, John DeRosa is charged with fatally shooting Xavier Egoavil the morning of Aug. 18. 2009 during the robbery at Rachel Jewelers on Kearny Avenue.
Finckenauer told jurors that three witnesses who testified for the state had "every incentive in the world to lie. So when you are trying figure out what's the truth and what's not the truth, the truth is there is nothing but these three lying witnesses that say John DeRosa had anything to do with this. The truth is he didn't have anything to do with it."
But Hudson County Assistant Prosecutor Leo Rinaldi said video, phone records and the testimony of other witnesses corroborated the testimony of DeRosa's co-defendants Elvis Feratovic, the admitted getaway driver, and Edmir Sokoli, who said he entered the store with DeRosa and saw the shooting, proved beyond a reasonable doubt that DeRosa was guilty of the murder.
Both co-defendants had been charged with felony murder but pleaded guilty to robbery and face up to 20 years in prison when sentenced, based on plea deals which required their cooperation in the prosecution of DeRosa.
Finckenauer was also referring to testimony given by DeRosa's former girlfriend, Marissa Fuzio, who admitted she had a 40-bag-a day heroin addiction at the time of the robbery and was facing several burglary charges for which she later received only probation.
The defense attorney also noted some inconsistencies in the statements made by the three witnesses. He noted that in statements given by Fuzio, she asks detectives, police "Did I do good?" "did I pick out the right photo?" and "did I give you what you want?"
Rinaldi noted that testimony from the victim's mother, who witnessed her son's fatal shooting, was that Sokoli, Feratoic and Fuzio were virtually identical in their description of events on the day of the robbery that turned fatal when the victim was shot four times.
"How would Edmir Sokoli know that Sylvia (Egoavil) said that?" Rinaldi asked the jury.
Feratovic and Sokoli said they met the older DeRosa at Guitar Bar in Newark where they worked as security and DeRosa proposed the robbery in July of 2009.
Rinaldi noted that phone records show the first calls between Sokoli and DeRosa were in July of 2009. He said that a week before the robber,y there were a flurry of calls between the pair and noted that Ferotic said he had backed out of the robbery on two occasions.
There were several calls between the pair the day before the murder at a time Sokoli and Feratovic said they had cased the store and Feratovic's BMW was captured on security video there. There was another flurry of calls between the pair the night before the robbery and the next day before and after the time of the robbery. After two weeks, all calls ceased.
Rinaldi noted video that showed DeRosa's SUV leaving his home on the morning of the robbery and video that showed it afterward as it drove 13 seconds behind Feratovic's BMS after the robbery. He said phone records show Sokoli and DeRosa were on the phone with each other at the time.
The prosecutor also noted that Fuzio gave a statement saying she and DeRosa had gone to New York to buy wigs and fake beards prior to the murder and the next day investigators went to the store and recovered a receipt which a store employee said corresponded to the items she said were purchased. He asked jurors how investigators could go to the store Fuzio named and find the receipt if she was not giving true information.
During the trial, the jury was shown a video recorded statement in which Fuzio stated that on the day of the robbery DeRosa "left early in the morning that day, on Tuesday, and then a couple hours later he called me and he was like, he was telling me there was a bag hanging from the front door and to go throw it away but not in the garbage can."
She said the bag contained trimmings from a fake beard and a bottle of glue used to attach the beard. She said she discarded it at a convenience store.
Fuzio also said that when DeRosa returned home on the day of the robbery he told her "he had robbed a jewelry store and it want bad. She said he had a bag and "he just pulled out handfuls of jewelry."
The girlfriend said he told her, "they were thinking there was just going to be an old man in the store that day but when they got in there was this big guy, his son I think, and when he came at him he shot at him," Fuzio told investigators. "He wasn't sure if he killed him but he shot him like four times."
Tomorrow morning, the jurors will be instructed on the law regarding the charges against DeRosa and they will then begin deliberating.