With the autopsy photos of Prince Okorie’s bullet-riddled face before him, Raymond Roseboro, on the stand Monday, told his jury that he did not fire the gun that killed the 16-year-old.
Dressed in a light blue button-down shirt, a blue and white stripped tie, and dark gray slacks, Roseboro spoke clearly and firmly through his one hour of testimony and cross-examination.
At his attorney’s prodding, he outlined the way he spent the day Okorie was killed, beginning with waking up, getting dressed, then meeting his girlfriend at a corner store to buy a Metro card. Then Roseboro, 20, took the 70 bus down to DC Superior Court for a hearing, he said.
He told the jury that he had been arrested for illegally possessing ammunition. The ammunition wasn’t his, he said. He explained that a friend of his was giving him a ride, he didn’t know all the people in the car and that the ammunition belonged to someone else, but that it was stored next to where he was sitting. The case was dismissed in January, his attorney, James Rudasill, said.
Roseboro told the jury that when he was finished with his hearing, he went to Roosevelt High School, where he was in the 12th grade. He arrived in time for World History, a class he liked, he said.
When school finished for the day, at 3:15, he walked back to the corner store to meet his girlfriend, then together they walked back to his home on Fifth Street Northwest. They walked up Webster, to Kansas, to Buchanan, to Fifth, Roseboro said, arriving home before 4 p.m.
Roseboro said his mom was home and anxious that he be home, too, because a jobs counselor had an appointment with him at their house at 4 o’clock that afternoon. Because of that appointment, once he arrived home he stayed there until after the counselor had left, about 6:30 or so that evening.
Roseboro’s mother and his cousin, who was at the house that day, testified Monday that Roseboro was home with his girlfriend the afternoon of Nov. 30.
The father of one of Okorie’s friends testified last week that he saw Roseboro with his son, Okorie, and another young man just minutes before he heard the gunshots the afternoon of Nov. 30. He later learned that those gunshots, fired at 8th St and Delafield Pl Northwest, had killed Okorie.
Roseboro also testified about his relationships with Okorie and the two other young men who said they were present when Okorie was shot. Roseboro said he didn’t know Okorie well, and that he didn’t know the others at all.
Okorie, at 16, was four years younger than himself, Roseboro said.
“He was Muslim and I’m a Muslim so when I see him I greet him ‘salaam,’” Roseboro said. The afternoon that Okorie was killed, Roseboro said that while walking home he saw Okorie sitting on a porch with nine or ten young men about the same age as Okorie. He didn’t see anyone he recognized, except Okorie.
“I salaam’ed him,” Roseboro said.
