A Westmoreland County jury will resume deliberations Thursday morning in the retrial of a New Kensington man charged with the murder and robbery of an Arnold drug dealer.

Jurors heard three days of testimony and deliberated nearly six hours Wednesday without reaching a verdict in the case against Letresse Williams.

Williams, 34, is charged with the Jan. 15, 2020, fatal shooting in New Kensington of 33-year-old Anthone Williams of Arnold. The defendant and victim are not related.

Letresse Williams was acquitted of first-degree murder following his first trial in June 2024. The jury in that case deliberated 14 hours over two days but was unable to reach verdicts on the remaining counts that included second-degree murder, third-degree murder, robbery and a weapons offense.

As he did last year, Williams again testified as the lone defense witness, denied involvement in the murder and claimed he loaned his phone to another man and sold the suspected murder weapon weeks before the fatal shooting.

“I don’t get involved in killing people,” Williams testified.

Williams conceded he at one time owned the 45-caliber semiautomatic pistol that prosecutors said fired two of the three rounds that struck and killed Anthone Williams.

Prosecutors argued evidence put Letresse Williams at the scene of the fatal shooting.

His DNA was found on a cellphone found in the car with the victim and inside the barrel of the suspected murder weapon that police discovered hidden under plywood in a wooded area several hundreds yards from where the victim’s body was found.

Cellphone records indicated Letresse Williams and the victim had communicated minutes before the shooting, while another witness claimed he was part of a conversation hours earlier that discussed the robbery plot against Anthone Williams.

His now-former girlfriend testified Letresse Williams confessed to her that he killed a man during a botched robbery, prosecutors said.

“The one person who fired the fatal shot was the defendant, and he left his tools of the trade there,” said Assistant District Attorney Leo Ciaramitaro during his closing argument to the jury. “The defendant had a plan that night to rob Anthone Williams, and he had a plan to explain the gun and had a plan to explain the phone.”

Prosecutors contend Letresse Williams and another, unidentified man, targeted the victim, a known drug dealer in the region. Evidence from a now-deceased witness, who testified during a preliminary hearing in 2021, suggested that minutes before the fatal shooting Anthone Williams sold cocaine to a New Kensington-area man for $300.

His body was found with more than $2,000 worth of cocaine and $40 in cash, prosecutors said.

Defense attorney Jaclyn Shaw argued prosecutors were unable to prove there was a robbery and asked that Letresse Williams be found not guilty.

“If you consider everything the commonwealth proffered, they have not proven murder,” Shaw said.

Williams also is awaiting trial in an unrelated case in which he is charged with attempted homicide. Prosecutors contend he shot at a parked vehicle in early December 2019 in New Kensington. Prosecutors contend the same gun used in the homicide was fired at the van in which three women were in and another person outside the vehicle.

Williams, during his testimony in the murder trial, conceded he possessed the suspected murder weapon used in the van shooting.

Prosecutors claim ballistics evidence suggests Williams’ gun was used in both shootings.

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