Jury convicts Munhall man in Hazelwood fatal drive-by shooting
A Munhall man will spend the rest of his life in prison after a jury found him guilty of first-degree murder in a drive-by shooting in Hazelwood.
Quentin Primus, 24, will be sentenced March 18 to the mandatory prison term by Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Anthony M. Mariani.
The jury delivered its verdict Tuesday.
Police said that Primus shot Darrian Davis and wounded two other people around 12:40 a.m. on July 1, 2022 as the three sat in a car on Johnston Avenue.
Davis, 18, of West Homestead died about 40 minutes later.
He was shot once in the left shoulder, and the bullet punctured his carotid artery, according to the criminal complaint.
One of the other victims was wounded in the chest and neck, while the third person’s hand was grazed.
Pittsburgh police said they recovered 14 spent shell casings on the street from two different handguns.
Using City of Pittsburgh street surveillance cameras, investigators saw a charcoal grey sedan circling that area of Hazelwood for several minutes.
The shooter, police said, hung out of the passenger-side window and fired two guns — one in each hand.
When police, who had the car’s license plate number, found the vehicle later that night, Primus was driving. He said that he had been renting the car from the owner and driving it for a month and a half, the complaint said.
Primus told detectives that he was at his girlfriend’s house at the time of the shooting. But the car’s entertainment system and GPS tracker suggested something different.
Police found that the car’s Bluetooth was connected to Primus’ phone in the minutes surrounding the shooting, and that he had received a call from his girlfriend 15 minutes after it happened.
The GPS showed the car traveling through Hazelwood for about an hour around the time of the shooting and slowing down as it passed the victim’s vehicle — just as the city’s ShotSpotter gunfire detection system recorded the attack.
Police found fingerprints on the passenger-side window that matched Primus’s and indicated that someone had been gripping the top of the window to brace against the vehicle to fire, according to the complaint.
Primus also was found guilty of attempted homicide, reckless endangerment, conspiracy and carrying a firearm without a license.
Paula Reed Ward is a TribLive reporter covering federal and Allegheny County courts. She joined the Trib in 2020 after spending nearly 17 years at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where she was part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team. She is the author of "Death by Cyanide." She can be reached at pward@triblive.com.
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