After deliberating for less than five hours, a jury on Thursday said it was hopelessly deadlocked in deciding whether a Wilmerding man was responsible for the shooting deaths of a woman and her 4-year-old daughter.

The judge on the case declared a mistrial, sending the jurors home while at the same time announcing that he would render his verdict in the co-defendant’s bench trial on Monday.

It was an abrupt ending to a trial that saw repeated delays because of juror emergencies and missing witnesses.

Tarrell Jennings, 21, of Wilmerding and Marquise St. Julien-Givner, 23, of Wilkinsburg, are charged with the Dec. 1, 2022, shooting deaths of Temani Lewis and her daughter, Kaari Thompson in Pittsburgh.

Their trials began on Nov. 12 before Common Pleas Judge Bruce Beemer.

While Jennings opted for a jury trial, St. Julien-Givner asked for his case to be heard by the judge in a nonjury trial. Jurors heard witnesses against both men at the same time.

On Thursday, the parties gave closing arguments, and the jurors began deliberating in Jennings’ case around 1 p.m.

By 3 p.m., the panel had returned to the courtroom asking to rewatch several pieces of video evidence that the prosecution said showed the two defendants committing the crime that night.

The jurors went back out to deliberate after 4 p.m. Two hours later, they reported to the judge they were deadlocked.

Beemer called the group back into the courtroom and instructed them to keep working.

“You’re going to have to further deliberate,” he told them. However, he added, “There is no rule as to how long you must deliberate.”

If the jurors found that they were “hopelessly deadlocked,” Beemer told them, they were to report that to the court.

Less than an hour later, they said they were, and the judge declared a mistrial.

The shooting

The prosecutor told the jury the evidence was clear.

Early in the evening on the day of the shooting, Jennings met his mother at a Shadyside Chipotle to borrow her car, Assistant District Attorney Diana Page told the jury.

From there, Page said, Jennings and 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 green Jeep that Lewis was driving.

Lewis, 21, of East Hills had just picked up her boyfriend, Tyree Lawson, 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 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, gunfire erupted from all around the vehicle.

The prosecution argued on Thursday that four people fired at Lewis’ vehicle, but Lawson didn’t see them.

“I shot back,” Lawson said.

“Why did you shoot back?” Page asked.

“To protect me and my family.”

When the gunfire stopped — police said they recovered 34 casings — Lawson 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.

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.

It took 10 months before police filed charges against Jennings and St. Julien-Givner.

Motive unknown

According to Page, those two men and three others followed Lewis’s vehicle that night. Then, when she parked at the market, four of them got out of the Malibu, surrounded her Jeep and eventually opened fire.

“The four of them laid in wait to murder Temani Lewis, to murder Kaari Thompson and attempted to murder Tyree Lawson,” Page said.

Then, after the shooting, 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 showed Jennings was the driver and St. Julien-Givner was one of the shooters.

She urged the jury to convict Jennings of two counts of first-degree murder, citing the law of accomplice liability. Even if he only drove the car and didn’t fire a gun, she said, he was still guilty.

“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 in the nonjury trial that 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’ Jeep 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.”

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