Jury begins deliberating in Pittsburgh slaying of girl, 4, and her mom

The prosecutor told the jury the evidence was clear.

On the evening of Dec. 1, 2022, Tarrell Jennings met his mom at a Shadyside Chipotle to borrow her car.

From there, the prosecutor said, he and Marquise St. Julien-Givner and another person drove the Chevy Malibu around the East End, eventually picking up two more men. They then began to follow a car.

Within minutes, 34 shots had been fired at that car, killing 4-year-old Kaari Thompson and fatally wounding her mother, Temani Lewis, who died six days later.

Lewis’s boyfriend, Tyree Lawson, was grazed.

“The four of them laid in wait to murder Temani Lewis, to murder Kaari Thompson and attempted to murder Tyree Lawson,” Allegheny County Assistant District Attorney Diana Page said Thursday during her closing argument in the homicide trials of Jennings and St. Julien-Givner.

Then, she continued, Jennings, who was the driver, picked up his associates and drove away.

Page highlighted video clips, crime-scene photos, license-plate-reading cameras and cell phone records that she said show that Jennings was the driver that night, and St. Julien-Givner was one of the shooters.

Page urged the jury to convict Jennings, 21, of Wilmerding of two counts of first-degree murder.

St. Julien-Givner, 23, of Wilkinsburg, opted for a nonjury trial. Jurors heard witnesses against both men at the same time, but St. Julien-Givner’s case will be decided by Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Bruce Beemer, who is presiding over both trials.

Defense attorneys claimed the prosecution failed to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt and that their clients must be acquitted.

Jurors began deliberating Thursday afternoon. Beemer did not say when he would issue a verdict for St. Julien-Givner.

Protecting his family

Lewis, 21, of East Hills had just picked up her boyfriend that evening at a friend’s house when they stopped at Brooklyn Market, a convenience store in the 1500 block of Lincoln Avenue in Lincoln-Lemington.

Lawson testified last week that Lewis went inside for snacks and tobacco while he and Kaari stayed in the green Jeep parked outside.

“We were playing,” he said. “She was kicking the back of my seat.”

Lawson said Lewis, who he’d been dating for a few years, was in the store for just a minute or two.

When she got back to the Jeep, video played in court showed, shooting began from all around the vehicle.

The prosecution argued on Thursday that four people were firing at Lewis’ vehicle. A window shattered.

“I shot back,” Lawson said.

“Why did you shoot back?” Page asked.

“To protect me and my family.”

Lawson testified that he didn’t see the shooters.

When the gunfire stopped, he got Kaari out of her child safety seat and took her into the store to try to get help.

Then he returned to Lewis who had been shot in the head.

Kaari, a student at Pittsburgh Lincoln Early Childhood, died at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh.

Nearly a week later her mom died in the hospital.

Pittsburgh police charged Jennings and St. Julien-Givner 10 months after that.

At the time she was killed, Lewis was awaiting trial on charges of her own. She was accused of shooting two people in Homewood that summer and was scheduled for a nonjury trial on charges of attempted homicide and related counts on Jan. 23, 2023.

‘They want you to guess’

Citing the law of accomplice liability, Page asked the jury to find Jennings guilty of two counts of first-degree murder — even if he only drove the car and didn’t fire a gun.

“Tarrell Jennings dropped them off. He stayed and waited for them. The Malibu circles the neighborhood and waits and picks up the four shooters up the street,” Page said. “He’s in this with them. Tarrell Jennings doesn’t have to have pulled the trigger himself.”

The prosecution did not identify a motive for the attack, and on Thursday, Page told the jurors that understanding the reason why is not necessary to reach a guilty verdict.

“Are there gaps and holes in the story? Yes,” Page said. “But is there enough information you can see the general picture? Yes.”

But Jennings’ lawyer, Kelvin Morris, told the jury that’s not the case.

“They are still not able to identify Mr. Jennings as the driver of this car, as the shooter in this car,” he said. “Nobody ever says he has a gun or points a gun.”

Morris urged the jurors to pay attention to what was missing in the prosecution’s case.

Investigators were unable to say what caliber weapons killed the victims, the defense attorney said, and there was no forensic evidence.

“The commonwealth’s whole case is … they want you to guess,” Morris said. “The law demands proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Two never charged

Defense attorney Owen Seman, who represents St. Julien-Givner, argued the prosecution was unable to place his client at the shooting scene.

In an interview with police, St. Julien-Givner agreed that video from Chipotle showed him with Jennings that evening as they picked up the car.

And video from a nearby BP gas station clearly shows St. Julien-Givner wearing the same distinctive blue coat and ripped jeans.

But the shooting, Seman said, didn’t occur until 12 minutes later — and more than a mile away.

“What is placing Mr. St. Julien-Givner on the scene?” Seman asked. “Nothing. Not one person.”

But Page disagreed.

“It is not even fathomable he disappeared and someone else plopped down in his place,” she said.

She argued that video evidence showed there would not have been enough time for the Malibu to have stopped, dropped off St. Julien-Givner and picked up someone new — and still allow it to follow directly behind Lewis’ vehicle as the cameras showed.

Video from the shooting scene, which the jurors asked to review several times, shows four people firing at Lewis’ vehicle, Page said.

The other suspects have never been charged.

Three of the shooters could be identified by their clothing, the prosecutor said. But the clothing worn by the fourth person — visible at the top of the screen — is not discernible.

That person, Page said, is St. Julien-Givner “by process of elimination.”

“He was with Tarrell Jennings from the beginning to the end with this,” Page said. “There are just no other reasonable explanations.”