Defense points finger at victim's friend for 2018 Arnold shooting

The lawyer for a man charged in the attempted homicide of man in Arnold three years ago said it was another man who fired three shots in a secluded alley.

Defense attorney Adam Gorzelsky told a Westmoreland County jury Tuesday that, despite what he expects will be a courtroom identification of his client as the trigger man, trial evidence will prove it was the victim’s longtime friend from Latrobe who fired the weapon April 12, 2018.

Prosecutors contend Nicholas Haynes, 24, who has listed addresses in Somerset, Greensburg and New Kensington, was the shooter.

He is charged with attempted homicide, aggravated assault, robbery and a weapons offense in connection with the shooting of then-18-year-old Malcolm Dunem. Haynes also is charged with witness intimidation and fabrication of evidence because police said he attempted to convince Dunem to change his testimony and identify another man as the shooter.

“The biggest injustice is convicting an innocent person,” Gorzelsky said in his opening statement. “One of the other two individuals there committed that crime.”

District Attorney John Peck told jurors Haynes held a grudge against Dunem for identifying to police a man who participated with him in a previous robbery. Peck said Haynes knew the identified man and tagged along with the others who arranged to meet with Dunem to collect money for a wrecked car and to buy drugs.

“This was a defendant who had some intense dislike, a cold hatred, of the victim,” Peck said. “He wasn’t a guy to wait for the justice system. He would serve up his own justice.”

He told jurors Haynes emerged from hedges and yelled for his victim to throw something to the ground before firing three shots from a .22-caliber handgun, hitting Dunem in the torso, left arm and right foot.

Dunem was hospitalized for a month and underwent five surgeries, Peck said.

Breah Gonzalez, 22, of Latrobe testified that she, along with her then-fiance, two other women and Haynes, drove together to Arnold.

They parked in an alley behind Dunem’s home when Haynes, who said he traveled with them to get clothes from his parents’ home nearby, and her fiance got out of the car.

She said a few minutes later, Haynes ran back with a gun and demanded the group speed away. When they returned to Latrobe, Gonzalez said she confronted Haynes outside a restaurant.

“He said he and Malcolm had problems in the past, and he had to handle it,” Gonzalez testified. She said she saw no other members of the group, including her fiance, with a gun that night.

Prosecutors identified 27 potential witnesses who could testify before Common Pleas Judge Scott Mears.

Testimony will continue Wednesday.