D.A.: Killer's name victim's last words

It's the kind of thing that happens in movies: A young man lies dying, with blood spreading out beneath him. As he takes his last breaths amid horrified onlookers, he utters the name of the man who shot him.

The scenario is so seemingly contrived, so Murder 101, that it's hard to believe, a defense attorney argued yesterday.

"That's textbook," attorney Evan Hughes told jurors. "It's absolutely perfect; few things in life ever are."

Hughes' closing arguments in defense of Andrew Poole capped an emotional four-day trial. Poole, 23, is accused of killing Tremayne Walker, 30, a promising Christian-rock musician from Overbrook, on a November afternoon last year.

During the trial, Assistant District Attorney Richard Sax argued that Poole had executed Walker because he mistakenly believed that he had snitched on him, fingering Poole as the gunman in a playground shooting six weeks earlier in which a toddler and another man were injured.

A "cruel and calculating" Poole fired at least nine bullets at Walker as he stood outside a church at 61st and Oxford streets, Sax said.

But, Sax concluded yesterday, Poole "hadn't counted on Tremayne [Walker], on his way to heaven, stopping off long enough" to name his killer.

In his closing argument, Sax said that at least three witnesses - including a friend of Walker's, a police officer, and a neighbor who heard the gunshots from inside her home and ran to Walker's side - heard Walker say, "If I die, Andrew Poole did this," or "Drew Poole got me."

Sax questioned, rhetorically: Of the hundreds of people who had crossed paths with Walker in his lifetime, why would he name Poole as his assassin?

"Tremayne Walker is dead - he killed him!" Sax fumed, pointing to Poole.

Wearing a plaid dress shirt and a pullover sweater, Poole sat calmly with his fingers curled around his chin, occasionally shaking his head as Sax spoke.

Poole is facing an avalanche of charges, including murder, attempted murder, aggravated assault and witness intimidation, for allegedly killing Walker in connection with the Sept. 24, 2007, shooting at Tustin Playground.

In that shooting, police allege, Poole slipped into the playground and fired a silver semiautomatic pistol 12 times in an attempt to kill Carl Wallace.

Wallace, 31, was hit seven times and critically injured. Meanwhile, two stray bullets struck 18-month-old Mehkee Gatewood in a foot and an elbow, as the toddler sat in a stroller with his twin brother. Poole then fled to his home on 61st Street near Columbia Avenue, about a block from the Overbrook playground, according to Sax.

Hughes argued that Poole wasn't at the playground at the time of the shooting, but was with his girlfriend at a motel just outside Philadelphia.

And when Walker was shot and killed, Poole was in New York visiting his girlfriend's relatives, Hughes said.

Wallace, who survived the playground shooting, testified that he didn't see who shot him, but a teenage girl who witnessed the incident picked out Poole from a police photo array.

The jury was expected to begin deliberations today. *