Cash convicted in Bensalem murder, rapes

A Bucks County jury convicted Omar Sharif Cash this morning on 19 criminal counts in the May 2008 shooting death of a man and the repeated raping of the man's girlfriend.

Cash, who was charged with first-degree murder, rape, robbery and related offenses, displayed no reaction in court when the foreman repeated the guilty verdicts.

The rape victim, a 43-year-old Brazilian woman who sat in the front row of the courtroom, peered up and sniffled, wiping her nose with a tissue as a translator spoke quietly to her about the verdict.

Tomorrow morning, the jury will begin hearing arguments in the penalty phase of the case, in which prosecutors will ask the jury to sentence Cash to death. His defense attorney will ask for life in prison.

Cash, of Philadelphia, was convicted of killing Edgar Rosas-Gutierrez, 32, near a highway off-ramp in Bensalem on May 11, 2008.

About 3:30 a.m. that day, Cash pointed a gun at Rosas-Gutierrez and kidnapped him and his girlfriend, the 43-year-old woman, from Jalapeno Joe's nightclub on Castor Avenue near Wyoming in Crescentville.

Cash forced Rosas-Gutierrez to drive at gunpoint as he raped the woman in the back seat.

He then told Rosas-Gutierrez to stop on an off-ramp in Bensalem, dragged him out of the car, ordered him up an embankment then shot him dead in the back of the head.

Cash then got back in the car, laughing and singing to the radio, and drove the woman to a parking lot where he raped her on the hood of the car.

He then drove the woman to a Comfort Inn in Lawrenceville, N.J., and raped her again in a hotel room.

The woman escaped after the two had gone to a vending machine to get drinks.