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Officer describes desperate bid to save wounded cop

A Philadelphia police officer who helped take a wounded Officer John Pawlowski to the hospital told a Common Pleas Court jury today that Pawlowski was unconscious and unresponsive during the two-block drive to the Albert Einstein Medical Center emergency room.

A Philadelphia police officer who helped take a wounded Officer John Pawlowski to the hospital told a Common Pleas Court jury today that Pawlowski was unconscious and unresponsive during the two-block drive to the Albert Einstein Medical Center emergency room.

"It was a dead pull," Stephen Mancuso testified, referring to the effort to drag Pawlowski from the sidewalk into the rear seat of a patrol car.

It was only with the help of a civilian volunteer that he and Officer Mark Klein, Pawlowski's partner, were able to move the unconscious officer into the car.

Mancuso was the third prosecution witness to testify as the death penalty hearing for the admitted shooter, Rasheed Scrugs, 35, went into its third day.

Scrugs, a paroled robber from West Philadelphia, pleaded guilty Thursday on what was to have been the first day of his murder trial in the Feb. 13, 2009 shooting of Pawlowski during a standoff at Broad Street and Olney Avenue.

By pleading guilty to first-degree murder, Scrugs has left the jury of eight women and four men with the decision about his sentence: life in prison with no chance of parole, or death by lethal injection.

Nevertheless, the city prosecutors are calling witnesses to establish what they have described as a malicious ambush - Scrugs fired from a revolver hidden in his coat pocket - that they say warrants execution.

Mancuso testified about how he arrived at Broad and Olney about 8:20 p.m. responding to a radio call from a cabbie who complained that Scrugs had roughed him up and was menacing him.

Mancuso said he arrived at the intersection seconds after Klein and Pawlowski and was taking a position behind his car door when he saw a muzzle-flash from Scrugs and watched Pawlowski tense up and then collapse to the sidewalk.

As Scrugs started walking past the fallen officer to escape west across Broad Street, Mancuso said he heard another shot and felt a bullet pass through the sleeve of his jacket but miss his arm.

Mancuso said he began firing at Scrugs, who collapsed face down on the concrete median strip on Broad Street, a revolver on the street a few feet away.

He was going to check on Scrugs when another officer walked up, Mancuso said. At the same instant, he said, "I heard Mark, Officer Klein, yelling and I told the other officer to watch him [Scrugs]. He was screaming for me to help him get John in the car."