Slain officer's kin, pal describe loss for jury

The jurors previously saw the bloodstained, bullet-torn uniform. They've listened to those who witnessed the murder of police Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski.

And yesterday, they heard from his family and friends, as they took turns on the witness stand wrestling with emotions while describing how they'd been changed by his May 3, 2008, slaying.

"I don't know how I got this far without falling apart," said his widow, Michelle. " Sometimes I wished I was with him instead of here dealing with all this stuff.

"But I knew I had to take care of his house and his kids and love and protect his grandkids for him," she continued. "I also had to stand up for him at his trial."

After calling Liczbinski, Assistant District Attorney Jude Conroy rested his case in the penalty phase of the trial of two men found guilty of first-degree murder last week.

After defense attorneys for Eric Deshann Floyd, 35, and Levon T. Warner, 40, present their cases starting today, the Common Pleas jury will have to decide whether to sentence them to death or to life imprisonment without parole.

Liczbinski, 39, was shot eight times by the defendants' accomplice, Howard Cain, as the trio fled a Port Richmond bank robbery in a stolen Jeep.

Though Cain, 34, was killed by police later that Saturday morning, Conroy convinced the jurors that the defendants, too, had conspired to kill anyone who got in their way, making them as guilty as Cain.

Three days shy of his 40th-birthday dinner, Liczbinski left behind a daughter and two sons - the oldest engaged, with his father's first grandchild on the way.

Matthew Liczbinski - who has since given his father a second grandchild - told the jury of how his "world turned on its head" the day his father was killed.

"Like that day, the rest of the better part of two-and-a-half years is also blurry, with these islands of clear memories," he said, "like picking out a casket for my dad, or driving up to the cemetery with my brother to find a burial plot."

Stephen, the sergeant's younger son, said in a statement read by Matthew that he will tell his yet-to-be-born children that "their grandfather was a hero for this city and his family, that he stood up to the criminals and scumbags of this city and gave his life to make sure that they did not prevail in what they had planned."

Amber, Liczbinski's daughter, who will attend Penn State's Abington campus this fall, said: "Some days are worse than others. Some days I don't even want to get out of bed. I just lay there staring at the ceiling thinking of all the things he's going to miss."

Martin Liczbinski told the court his late brother was the baby in a family of nine children from Port Richmond.

"Every time I see a police car - flashing lights, siren - I relive May 3, 2008, all over again - and I cry. They took my brother away from us. They took memories yet to be made," he said.

Police Officer Gary Harkins, who met Liczbinski early in the late officer's 12-year career and became a close friend, was on the phone with him just 20 minutes before he was gunned down.

"Steve should have never had to die like that; he did not deserve it," Harkins told the court. "Seeing him at the hospital that day, in that condition, will haunt me for the rest of my life."