NEWARK — After more than seven years in jail and two years after his last trial ended in a hung jury, Tariq Kyam took the stand in an Essex County courtroom Wednesday for the first time in his own defense.
“Mr. Kyam, were you at the A&L Deli on Feb. 6, 2009, to rob it?” asked public defender John McMahon.
“No sir,” Kyam said.
Kyam, formerly known as Raymond Perry, has been held at the Essex County Correctional Facility since late February 2009 in connection with a string of five robberies he allegedly committed with David Fate earlier that month.
Authorities allege that during one of those robberies, at a Sunoco gas station in Verona, Kyam, now 51, fatally shot a 29-year-old Boonton resident, Daniel Pritchard.
In 2014, he stood trial twice on murder and robbery charges for the Sunoco slaying. Both ended in mistrials. Fate, now 32, took a plea deal on robbery charges in exchange for testifying against Kyam at both trials. He has yet to be sentenced.
Kyam’s current trial, which opened two weeks ago before Judge Michael A. Petrolle, isn’t for the Verona robbery and killing charges, but rather for the armed robbery of another business he allegedly targeted with Fate during their crime spree – A&L Deli in Bloomfield.
The shopkeeper identified Kyam as a regular customer, and he and another man in the store later picked Kyam and Fate out of a police photo display. Kyam was identified as having brandished a gun during the robbery.
Assistant Prosecutor Brian Matthews said a search of the apartment Kyam shared with his girlfriend turned up, among other items, a black bag taken from one of the men and a gun, which police said Kyam was trying to stuff into a couch when they burst in.
Kyam denied knowing the gun was by the couch or intentionally possessing the bag, which he said Fate — who fled the state to South Carolina — left at his apartment the day Kyam took him to buy an Amtrak ticket.
On cross examination, Matthews pressed Kyam on whether he was really saying he had no idea the gun was in the couch.
“That’s the information in this case,” Kyam said, claiming he and his girlfriend rarely went in the living room.
The Newark man did acknowledge going shopping in New York City the day of the robbery with Fate and another man, who made purchases with credit cards taken from one of the victims of the A&L robbery.
McMahon played surveillance video of the robbery for the jury, and noted Kyam wasn’t seen making the purchases himself. Kyam said he was looking at a display in one of the stores when Fate suddenly came up to him and said they had to leave.
“From the way he responded, I figured out he was up to something and I didn’t want no part of it,” Kyam said.
Kyam testified he didn’t learn until discovery in the criminal case that men had been shopping with stolen credit cards.
In closing arguments, McMahon told the jury it was reasonable to suspect Kyam’s involvement in the robbery, given his admitted association with Fate and the video footage of their New York shopping spree on the stolen credit cards.
“But we gotta do more than suspect, here,” he said, noting there wasn’t “one instance (on video) where Tariq Kyam is going up to the register to purchase anything” with the stolen credit cards.
McMahon argued there was no reason Kyam, who lived in Newark, would have frequented the Bloomfield deli enough to be recognized as a regular customer by the victims.
The defense attorney also questioned the prosecution’s focus on the gun found in Kyam’s home, saying neither his DNA or fingerprints were found on it.
“There’s too much doubt here, and that’s really where we end,” he said.
In own summations, Matthews said Kyam “has to be the most unlucky person on the planet.”
If Kyam’s testimony was to be believed, he argued, those close to him had involved him in serious crimes and gone so far as to leave incriminating evidence at his home.
“The proofs in this case are overwhelming,” he said. “The factors you evaluate when you determine credibility I say point to the defendant’s guilt.”
Petrolle is expected to begin charging the jury Thursday morning.
Thomas Moriarty may be reached at tmoriarty@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @ThomasDMoriarty. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
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