DETAILS OF TOATLEY SHOOTING OFFERED

Pretrial Hearing Is Held In Death Of Undercover Trooper

WASHINGTON - An alleged drug dealer and an undercover Maryland trooper
struggled briefly before the dealer took a step back and shot the trooper
in the head, killing him, a police detective testified in U.S. District
Court yesterday.

The shooter then calmly walked away, apparently unaware police officers
were surreptitiously watching the entire scene from across the street, said
Detective Lorren Leadmon of Washington, D.C., police.

Two weeks after the shooting, police arrested Kofi Apea Orleans-Lindsay,
23, in New York City and charged him with first-degree murder in the death
of Cpl. Edward M. Toatley.

After Leadmon's testimony in a pretrial detention hearing yesterday,
Magistrate Judge John Facciola ordered Orleans-Lindsay held without bond
pending trial.

During the hearing, Leadmon revealed new details about the shooting Oct. 30
in Northeast Washington. Toatley was part of a federal, state and local
task force investigating drug dealing in Washington and its suburbs.

The task force started its drug investigation Oct. 3, Leadmon said.
Sometime before Oct. 30, Toatley told his colleagues that he was going to
purchase drugs that night from Orleans-Lindsay, according to the detective.

Leadmon said two video cameras recorded the incident, which began about
8:20 p.m. when Toatley picked up a sus-pected drug dealer and drove him to
the 2000 block of Douglas St., a residential neighborhood.

Leadmon testified that the tapes - one made from a camera in the dashboard
and another on the driver's side of the car - clearly show Orleans-Lindsay
in Toatley's Toyota. Orleans-Lindsay was wearing a sweat shirt with large
letters reading "GAP" on the chest.

After accepting $3,500 from Toatley for drugs, Orleans-Lindsay got out of
the car and walked down the street, Leadmon testified. Ninety seconds
later, a police officer in a nearby van reported that Orleans-Lindsay
returned to Toatley's truck, said Leadmon, who conceded during cross
examination that the officer couldn't clearly see the suspect's face.

The man opened the passenger side door of Toatley's car, Leadmon said, and
Toatley asked if anything was wrong. The man then reached under his sweat
shirt, pulled out a gun and pointed it at Toatley, who quickly tried to bat
the gun away, Leadmon said. The man stepped back and shot Toatley, Leadmon
said.

Leadmon said the videotapes in the car show that the shooter was wearing a
sweatshirt identical to one worn minutes earlier by Orleans-Lindsay. During
cross-examination, he said that the shooter's face could not be clearly seen.

The face "was just a tad short of being clear," Leadmon said.

Orleans-Lindsay's attorney, Billy Ponds, says police and prosecutors cannot
prove that his client pulled the trigger because the tape does not show the
face of the shooter. "There is no clear evidence that he is the shooter,"
Ponds said after the hearing.

After the shooting, Leadmon said, police recovered a key chain, with "Kofi"
written on it, in a nearby alley. Officers also found with the key chain an
obituary of one of Orleans-Lindsay's friends, who was killed in September.

Police launched a nationwide manhunt for Orleans-Lindsay and arrested him
in New York City on Nov. 13. He had an identification card that had his
picture but a different name, Arturo Sereno, Leadmon said.