By Annette Cohen-Massry & Chris Smoudianis

A Brooklyn Supreme Court jury today began deliberating the fate of Anthony Williams, who is accused of shooting and killing hero sanitation worker Damon Allen in 2006.

Allen, who caught a 4-year-old girl as she was thrown to safety out of a burning building in 2005, was shot in the head while urging bystanders to take cover from the crossfire of a gun-battle on Prospect Place in Crown
Heights.

Williams was accused of provoking the gunfight after allegedly robbing a man and returning to the scene with a gun.  Allen, who had no part in the dispute, tried to resolve the issue and witnesses say that’s when Williams opened fire.

“Damon Allen was executed when he was trying to put an end to a violent stream of events, the violent circumstances started with the defendant,” said Assistant DA Tim Gough in closing arguments. While the murder weapon was never found the prosecution used eye-witness accounts and ballistics evidence attempting to show by a process of elimination that the trajectory of the deadly bullet led to Williams as the shooter.

The prosecution hit a road-block at the start of the trial when several witnesses were too scared to testify, not wanting to be labeled  ‘snitches’ in a neighborhood where some street gangs were known to roam. The prosecution cleared this hurdle when 18-year-old Andrew King took the stand after he was threatened.  In closing arguments the prosecution urged the jury to take note of the quality of the evidence rather than the quantity.

The defense built its case around reasonable doubt, arguing that the murder weapon had not been found, that there was no solid ballistics evidence, no fingerprints, and a lot of hearsay. 

In closing arguments the defense also tried to pin the murder on Omar Benn, one of the other shooters involved in the gun-fight and characterized the case against Williams as mere “finger-pointing.”