Mar 27, 2009 1:04 am US/Eastern
Suspect In Officer's Slaying Held For Trial
PHILADELPHIA (AP) ―
A distraught, pregnant widow heaved and rocked methodically in the front row of a Philadelphia courtroom Thursday as she faced the man accused of gunning down her young police-officer husband.
Kimmy Pawlowski, flanked by her parents and in-laws, had the unenviable task of filling the victims' row in the high-security courtroom.
Several Philadelphia police families have endured the same grim assignment in the past three years, as seven officers have been killed on duty.
Pawlowski heard two hours of testimony about her husband John's last hours before a judge ordered defendant Rasheed Scruggs to stand trial for murder.
First came the "hack" cabbie who had called for help Feb. 13 over an apparent shakedown. Then a witness who heard the 25-year-old Pawlowski cry, "Oh, I am shot. I am hurt."
And finally, she heard from Mark Klein, her husband's baby-faced police partner, who dug his fingers into the witness box as he tried to stoically describe his efforts to get the fallen Pawlowski into their shot-up cruiser and to a hospital.
By then, a third officer had arrived on the scene and fired several shots at Scruggs, who collapsed in the median of one of the city's busiest intersections, as dozens of people meandered to the nearby bus depot that Friday night.
"What you are is a domestic urban terrorist. You ambushed a police officer who was responding to a citizen calling 911 for help," Municipal Judge Patrick Dugan said before upholding murder, robbery and other charges.
Scruggs, shot several times, used a walker to enter the courtroom and scowled at some of the witness testimony. His family declined comment, while defense lawyer Lee Mandell said only that he had tried to waive the hearing to spare the Pawlowskis further grief. Prosecutors refused the offer, he said.
Scruggs, 33, of Philadelphia, has a lengthy arrest record that includes felony robbery and other convictions.
He was allegedly trying to shake down unlicensed cabbie Emmanuel Cesar when Cesar crossed the street to call police. Scruggs threatened to shoot both him and police if he made the call, Cesar testified. But the responding officers never got that warning.
"The officers didn't know what they were walking in to," said Assistant District Attorney Ed McCann, head of the city's homicide unit. "Nobody told police that he had threatened to kill a police officer."
Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey had learned of Pawlowski's death between stops at a benefit for one slain officer and the wedding of another fallen officer's son. He could barely take in the news.
"I didn't think it was possible," Ramsey said at Pawlowski's funeral.
At least five Philadelphia officers have been fatally shot on duty in recent years, including one allegedly shot during a doughnut store robbery by a suspect he had chased just six weeks earlier.
Two others died in vehicle pursuits.
Pawlowski's sister, Lauren, described him in a eulogy as an "absolutely an all-American kid," a sports fanatic who played basketball as a boy until his fingertips bled.
He had first kissed his wife in fifth grade and was thrilled about their first pregnancy. He had become an officer five years earlier, following his brother onto the force. The brother on Thursday frequently bear-hugged their grieving father in the front row.
In his final hours, Pawlowski drove Klein to the scene. They saw Cesar flagging them down, stepped out of the vehicle and spotted the suspect, about 20 feet away in the median. They ordered him to take his hands out of his pocket.
"He looked at John -- he looked in (my) direction -- and then he looked at John and fired out of his pocket," Klein testified.
Police say Scruggs fired two more shots into Pawlowski, and three more at the third officer, Stephen Mancuso, who fired several shots into Scruggs.
(© 2009 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
Officer Pawlowski Killed In Line Of Duty
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