A reader had a question about last week's trial of Thomas Coffee, who a Philadelphia jury found guilty of first-degree murder on Aug. 4 for the 2013 shooting of a South Jersey man lured to an armed robbery by Coffee's ad on the Craigslist Internet marketplace to trade for an all-terrain vehicle.
The question was about another of Coffee's victim, Ben Booker, who was robbed of four guns and his Lexus on June 8, 2013 when he responded to Coffee's Craigslist ad to trade guns for a motorcycle.
Why, the reader asked, wasn't Booker charged with illegally trafficking in firearms? The reader also attached a backgrounder from the National Rifle Association advising that the only legal way for a Pennsylvania gun owner to sell or transfer a weapon to another gun owner is by using a registered gun dealer or a county sheriff's office as the broker or intermediary. Both will do an instant records check on the prospective purchaser.
Any article I write usually requires a lot of background research to understand the subject matter. For space reasons, not all of that research winds up in the article. In some cases, based on this reader's question, it should have.
The answer, as Booker explained to the Common Pleas Court jury when he testified at Coffee's trial, was that was exactly what he planned to do. Booker testified that he legally owned all the firearms and had a permit to carry the pistol he wore that day.
Booker testified that he decided to meet the Craigslist advertiser and if he was still interested in the trade they would go to a nearby gun dealer he had used before for such transactions.
Unfortunately for Booker, when he showed up at the appointed spot in the 4600 block of Stenton Avenue in Logan, he found the motorcycle and a man he identified as Coffee and several other armed men who forced him to the ground at gunpoint. Booker testified the robbers then took the contents of his pockets, his guns and his Lexus and drove away leaving a motorcycle that did not start.
Prosecutors said that one of Booker's stolen weapons – a .40-caliber pistol – was the gun Coffee used on June 21, 2013 to kill 27-year-old Daniel Cook, of Williamstown in South Jersey, when Cook arrived at his meeting with Coffee about 11 p.m. at East Walnut Lane and Hollis Street in West Oak Lane.
After the jury's Aug. 4, Judge Glenn B. Bronson immediately sentenced the 25-year-old Coffee to the mandatory life in prison without parole plus a consecutive 50 to 100 years for Booker and two other armed robberies the jury found Coffee committed.
