Trial begins in fatal prom night shooting in Bucks County
An argument between teens on prom night in Bristol last spring left two dead. Now, two men are on trial for the fatal shootings.
Zyisean McDuffie‘s taunts to a neighborhood rival set off a chain reaction that left him and another teen dead, prosecutors said, as they watched a mutual friend take pictures before prom last spring in Bucks County.
His words were repeated Wednesday in Doylestown, as Joseph Williams and Gary Goddard faced a jury in the first day of the double-murder trial.
”If you have it, pull it out and let it blow,” McDuffie allegedly said May 4 during an argument with Williams, 19, a dispute between neighborhood groups that exploded on the lawn of a home in Bristol Township.
After nearly a year of investigation, the details of that shooting are being laid bare in front of Common Pleas Court Judge Alan M. Rubenstein in a trial expected to stretch beyond next week.
“Sophomore and junior prom is a night of making memories, a night of happy memories," Deputy District Attorney Thomas C. Gannon said in his opening statement to jurors. “Most of all, it’s for making memories with your family. But for three families, those good memories, that great night was ruined by the actions of these two men."
Williams has been charged with criminal homicide in the deaths of McDuffie and Tommy Ballard, both 19. That fatal incident also involved Goddard, 44, who police say walked up to McDuffie as he lay prone, injured, and fired a shot into his head at point-blank range.
Initially, Goddard was charged with criminal homicide, but the offense was reduced to attempted homicide after an autopsy revealed that the shots fired by Williams had mortally wounded McDuffie.
Though the two are being tried together, prosecutors noted Wednesday that the suspects apparently acted independently. Accordingly, their attorneys offered divergent explanations of their innocence.
Goddard acted out of self-defense, paralyzed by fear that his son, also named Gary, was being attacked, according to his attorney, Blake Jackman. And Williams’ attorney, John J. Fioravanti Jr., cast doubt on the evidence presented by the District Attorney’s Office, saying it didn’t prove that his client had fired a gun at all.
Investigators have said the shooting was rooted in a gathering that night at a home on Elmhurst Avenue in the township’s Winder Village section. There, Williams, Goddard’s son, and other teens were hanging out, watching as a friend who lived at the home was getting ready for the prom that night at Harry S. Truman High School.
At one point, McDuffie arrived at the home and “exchanged words” with Williams, according to Gannon. McDuffie returned not long after with Ballard and a third teen, Jahmier Wilson. A fight broke out almost immediately, during which witnesses said Williams pulled out a .38-caliber revolver and started firing at Wilson as he tried to run away.
The shots struck Ballard, who collapsed on the lawn of a nearby home. During the gunfire, McDuffie, who had been shot by Williams, was approached by Goddard, who shot the teen with a .32-caliber revolver, knocking him to the ground. Witnesses told police Goddard then stood over McDuffie and fired additional shots.
Jackman, Goddard’s defense attorney, scoffed at that. He said Goddard fired only twice: one errant shot that ended up in the nearby house, and the shot that struck McDuffie in the head. And he did so, Jackman explained, to save his son, who he claimed was being attacked by McDuffie when Goddard walked up to the scene of the fight.
Gannon, the prosecutor, disputed the credibility of Goddard’s self-defense claim.
“Ask yourself: Where was his son when he stood over Zyisean McDuffie and fired a bullet into his head?” Gannon said. "How dangerous was Zyisean McDuffie when he pulled that trigger?”
Goddard fled with his son after the shooting, and was arrested days later. A subsequent search of his apartment revealed the gun used in the shooting, which he was licensed to carry.
Williams was arrested hours after the shooting. Investigators say surveillance footage shows him and two other teens running to a nearby house, where detectives later recovered the .38-caliber revolver used to kill McDuffie and Ballard stashed in a barbecue.
The gun, Gannon said, was allegedly passed to Williams by another teen, who in turn received it from Jamie Lynn Landis, a Bucks County woman currently charged with illegally purchasing that weapon and two others for minors.