Jury to begin deliberating fatal shooting at Club Erotica in McKees Rocks

Seth McDermit wouldn’t be dead if Charles Becher and his relatives had let McDermit and his friends leave a McKees Rocks strip club early Jan. 29, a prosecutor told an Allegheny County jury Tuesday.

Instead, Becher, 24, and the two women he was with escalated the situation, Assistant District Attorney Ryan Kiray said during his closing arguments.

“If (Becher and his relatives) really felt threatened, they could go inside and call the police,” Kiray said. “You do not get to follow a group of men who are trying to walk away, start a fight with them and then kill one of them when the fight doesn’t go your way.

“(Becher) was not justified in anything that he did that day.”

Kiray asked the jury to find Becher guilty of first-degree murder stemming from the Jan. 29 shooting at Club Erotica in McKees Rocks. Becher is charged with killing McDermit, 31, of Monongahela.

Another man, Christopher Butler, 22, of West Mifflin, also was killed that night. Khalil Walls, 26, is charged in connection with Butler’s death and will be tried separately next year.

Becher’s trial began earlier this month before Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Anthony M. Mariani. Becher testified last week on his own behalf, claiming self-defense. The jury was to begin deliberating Tuesday afternoon.

Kiray said the women with Becher — a sister and cousin — were the ones who initially approached McDermit and his group of friends, after the group had been involved in a fight with another man. During that confrontation, one of the men in the group, Butler, punched one of the women.

That woman responded by telling the men that Becher, who had been inside the club, would “smoke them,” the prosecutor said.

Kiray said the group of men were, by that point, walking toward their cars to leave, but the women reengaged them.

“The defendant and his group pushed this confrontation far further than it needed to go,” Kiray said.

Kiray said the women “pushed, shoved and attacked these men even though they were doing nothing more than trying to extricate themselves from the situation.”

At first, Becher stood back watching. But as the shoving continued, police said, Becher pulled out his gun and used it to strike one of the men. When he did so, video showed, the gun flew from his hand and the men attacked him.

During the scrum, shots were fired from outside the scrum and Becher was struck in the leg. He tried to get up and run, but couldn’t and fell back to the ground. It was then that he spotted his gun and grabbed it. McDermit was punching him and on top of him.

Becher claimed in his testimony that he fired two warning shots before firing again and striking McDermit.

Kiray argued they weren’t warning shots. Instead, Becher had just missed a moving target, the prosecutor said.

“It was only pushing and shoving until the defendant introduced the gun,” Kiray said. “The defendant brought a gun to a fistfight. Those men were entitled to hit back until the threat was gone.”

Defense attorney James Wymard told the jury that his client no longer had control of the weapon by the time he was down on the ground, and that he was being beaten by four men much larger than him, who stomped, kicked and choked him.

“He’s helpless,” Wymard said. “Was it reasonable for my client, Charles Becher, to fire that gun when he was down on the ground with Seth McDermit on top of him — a 6-feet-5-inch, 270-pound man on top of him, saying, ‘I’m going to (expletive) kill you?’

The defense painted the men as members of a biker gang who were drunk and had cocaine in their system that night.

“The aggression came only from the bikers like it had all night — it was a continuum,” Wymard said. “How much pain and suffering would you expect the defendant to endure as he laid there shot, kicked, punched and choked?”

The defense told the jury that Becher didn’t know who shot him.

“Does he have every reason to believe it was the bikers that shot him? Absolutely. What else would he believe?”

Wymard urged the jury to consider what his client would have been thinking as the attack by McDermit continued.

“Was it reasonable for him to believe he was in danger of death or serious bodily harm at that point? This is the crux of the case. We’re down to three seconds that he has to make that determination.”