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Bucks jury convicts Cash in carjacking, slaying

A Philadelphia man with a history of violent crime was found guilty by a Bucks County jury of all counts, including first degree murder, in the carjacking and execution-style murder of an immigrant and the rape of his girlfriend.

Omar Sharif Cash was convicted today of all charges in the carjacking and slaying an immigrant carpenter. (Inquirer File Photo)
Omar Sharif Cash was convicted today of all charges in the carjacking and slaying an immigrant carpenter. (Inquirer File Photo)Read more

A Philadelphia man with a history of violent crime was found guilty by a Bucks County jury of all counts, including first degree murder, in the carjacking and execution-style murder of an immigrant and the rape of his girlfriend.

Omar Cash, 28, sat quietly as the jury foreman responded "guilty" on all counts of murder, rape, kidnapping, robbery and other related charges in the May 2008 crime spree.

The six-man, six-woman jury returned its verdicts after deliberating for six and a half hours over two days.

The panel will return to court Friday to begin the process of determining if Cash should be sentenced to death for the execution-style shooting of Edgar Rosas-Gutierrez on a roadside embankment in Bensalem.

Cash also awaits trial in Philadelphia on charges that he murdered a 19-year-old man at a car wash on Frankford Avenue in April 2008.

Philadelphia police were seeking his arrest in that case when Cash allegedly carjacked Rosas-Gutierrez and his Brazilian-born girlfriend as they left Jalapeño Joe's, a club in the city's Crescentville section.

Cash was desperate for a way out of town when he forced Rosas-Gutierrez, 32, to drive toward Bucks County and raped the man's girlfriend in the backseat of the vehicle, Deputy District Attorney Marc Furber said in his closing argument Wednesday.

The couple were "the perfect victims" for Cash, Furber argued. "They were tools to him. . . . He didn't think they would be missed; they were illegal immigrants."

After shooting Rosas-Gutierrez in the head, Cash resumed brutalizing the woman, Furber said, raping her twice more before she escaped from a Lawrenceville, N.J., motel where he had taken her.

The woman, 43, testified about the ordeal last week, sobbing on the witness stand.

"If she was acting, she deserves the Academy Award," Furber said. Yet that is what Cash claimed when he testified on Tuesday.

He said the woman was a prostitute whom he had met at the New Jersey motel through an acquaintance who is a pimp. He denied any involvement in the slaying, and his lawyers suggested the woman had cooperated with police in order to legalize her immigration status and to file a negligence lawsuit seeking damages against Jalapeño Joe's.

The jury did not buy it.