A snapshot of the cop-killing case

Posted: June 29, 2010

Here's a run-down of the murder trial that Common Pleas Judge Renee Cardwell Hughes is presiding over this week.

Defendants: Eric Deshann Floyd, 35, of North Philadelphia, and Levon Terrell Warner, 41, of Mantua.

Charges: First-degree murder, robbery, conspiracy and related counts.

Penalty: Potentially death, if found guilty of first-degree murder.

Victim:Police Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski, 39, of the Northeast. A 12-year department veteran, Liczbinski was married with three children.

Prosecutor: Assistant District Attorney Jude Conroy.

Defense: For Floyd, attorneys Earl Kauffman and William Bowe; for Warner, attorneys Gary Server and W. Fred Harrison Jr.

Missing: Floyd, who attacked Bowe in the courtroom June 9 during jury selection. He's been barred from the courtroom and will watch the trial on a TV monitor from inside a jail cell.

Crime: Shortly after 11 a.m. on May 3, 2008, three men robbed the Bank of America branch inside the ShopRite at Castor and Aramingo avenues, in Port Richmond.

Liczbinski, in his police cruiser, spotted the robbers' Jeep going southbound on Edgemont Street and followed it onto Schiller Street.

At Schiller and Almond streets, Floyd stopped the Jeep and Warner, in the back seat, handed a rifle to Howard Cain, who was seated next to Floyd, according to the defendants' police statement.

With one foot inside the Jeep, Cain, 33, aimed the rifle over the top of the vehicle and began shooting Liczbinski, who had just gotten out of his cruiser.

Hit five times, Liczbinski managed to say, "Tell my wife and my kids I love them," before he died.

Police killed Cain later that day. After being arrested, Floyd and Warner gave statements in which they admitted their involvement in the bank robbery.

- Mensah M. Dean

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