In a matter of seconds, a highway traffic stop in Tredyffrin Township sent Joel Perez Rodriguez from confusion, to panic, to fear.
When he saw red-and-blue emergency lights in his rearview mirror, he did what any law-abiding citizen would do, Chester County prosecutors said Thursday: He pulled onto the shoulder of the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
But Assistant District Attorney Monica Szyszkiewicz said the men who approached Perez Rodriguez’s vehicle on March 28 were not police officers — they were criminals, in league with his sister’s uncle, hired to rob Perez Rodriguez of $49,000 his sister had given him an hour earlier at her home in Germantown.
The botched robbery ended with Perez Rodriguez shot in the chest, as other bullets narrowly missed his wife and 4-year-old son.
Two of those men, Roberto Morel, 51, and Tuften Green, 31, were held for trial Thursday evening on attempted murder, aggravated assault, attempted theft and related crimes after an hours-longpreliminary hearing before District Judge Lauren Holt. Holt dismissed kidnapping charges the men faced, arguing there was a lack of evidence to support them.
The third suspect, Terrell Adams, 38, waived his hearing, and will also be held for trial.
Lawyers for Morel and Green told Judge Holt that Szyszkiewicz and Pennsylvania State Police investigators had built their case entirely on circumstantial evidence.
Morel’s attorney, Timothy Tarpey, said his client did not spend time with Perez Rodriguez during the three days he and his family visited his sister, and asserted he had no knowledge of the money being exchanged.
But Szyszkiewicz said investigators, using a litany of surveillance footage and cell phone data, had been able to reconstruct the entire plot, which began with the three men meeting up hours before the shooting at a gas station in Germantown. Video from that location, played in court, showed Morel and Green arriving at the same time, in separate vehicles, and discussing their plan, according to Trooper Adam McLaughlin.
“They conspired to pull the victim over for what other reason than to get the money they had received an hour before,” she said, arguing it was no coincidence that Morel had a clear connection to Perez Rodriguez. “Why else would do that?
Green’s attorney, Brian McCarthy, said despite the voluminous text messages prosecutors had pored over between his client and Morel, neither man made specific mention of a robbery, nor was there any attempt during the car stop to take the money from the car’s backseat.
Judge Holt was not swayed.
Another video, taken from a Ring surveillance camera near where Perez Rodriguez’s sisterlives showed the three men began following his car moments after he pulled out of her driveway, en route to his home in North Carolina.
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And data pulled from Green’s smartphone showed he was on the phone with Morel throughout the entire chase and subsequent shooting. The call ended, Szyszkiewicz said, when Perez Rodriguez fled the scene.
His sister owns a bodega in Germantown and had given him the $49,000 to invest in his tobacco business back in North Carolina.
As the family was driving westbound on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, they were being tailed by the Chevrolet Suburban being driven by Adams, investigators said Thursday, as well as a Honda CRV driven by Morel.
Text messages revealed Green and Morel had discussed adding emergency lights to the SUV, exchanging pictures of them both before and after they had been attached to the vehicle’s dashboard, according to testimony Thursday.
Once those lights were activated, Perez Rodriguez pulled over. He assumed, he said Thursday, that the occupants of the car behind him were undercover officers.
Green and Adams approached his car. Both were dressed in all black, with Adams wearing a hat with “police” sewn into it.
Right away, Perez Rodriguez said he knew something was wrong with the so-called officers. The way they spoke and carried themselves made him suspicious.
His suspicions were confirmed when Green, seeing Perez Rodriguez’s wife was trying to dial 911, stuck a handgun into her ribs and tried to grab the phone from her.
Perez Rodriguez sped away, and Green, according to prosecutors, fired the handgun five times.
An Army reservist, coincidentally driving by in the aftermath of the shooting, saw Perez Rodriguez had pulled again onto the shoulder, and stopped to help, prosecutors said. She helped stabilize his gunshot wound until medics arrived to take him to Paoli Hospital.
All three defendants will be arraigned in county court in West Chester later this month.
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