Trial starts in shooting of man wearing $300 'Beats'

The prosecutor called Christian Massey a "gentle giant" - a 6-foot-2 star athlete and special-needs student obsessed with high-tech gadgetry.

But when a man with a gun ordered the 21-year-old Massey to turn over his brand-new Beats by Dre headphones on Nov. 30, 2013, the gentle giant was anything but.

"This was this kid's life, and he fights for these headphones, and it cost him," Assistant District Attorney Brendan O'Malley told a Philadelphia Common Pleas Court jury Tuesday in the opening of the murder trial of the man police say killed Massey.

O'Malley said the evidence - principally Arkel Garcia's confession - would prove that the 21-year-old West Philadelphia man shot Massey three times and left him to die on the street.

"He was a soft target, he was an easy score for this man," O'Malley said, describing Massey, whose $300 Beats headphones drowned out the world around him in the 5900 block of Lebanon Avenue on the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

Defense attorney Joshua E. Scarpello urged the jury of 10 women and two men to keep open minds.

"You have to decide the facts, and you weren't there," Scarpello said in his opening. "None of us were there, and that includes my client, Arkel Garcia."

Scarpello said Garcia's confession was made after police held him for 24 hours with little sleep, no food or water, and no access to his mother or a lawyer. Garcia's statement conflicted with the prosecution's theory of an armed robber's accosting Massey, Scarpello said.

Scarpello said no witnesses or physical evidence would link Garcia to the robbery and murder: "Whoever did kill Mr. Massey is still now out on the streets."

Massey was from the Carroll Park neighborhood in West Philadelphia and had attended a special-needs school in Delaware County. He was then mainstreamed into Marple Newtown High School, where he excelled in football, basketball, and lacrosse. Massey had finished junior college and was planning on going to a four-year school.