CRACK SELLER CALLS KILLING OF CUSTOMER SELF-DEFENSE

A 19-year-old Homewood woman admitted yesterday that she shot a
customer who often bought crack cocaine from her, but said it was self-defense.

Karena Dorsey testified during her nonjury trial that she went
looking for 42-year-old Dwayne Rankin on Sept. 26 because he stole
about $750 of the custom-made drug from her.

"If I had the intention of killing him, I would not go [to the place
he was getting high] with three other women in broad daylight," Ms.
Dorsey testified yesterday. "He was high as hell and I thought, 'He's
going to kill me if I don't shoot him.' "

In her closing argument, Assistant Public Defender Lisa Middleman
asked the judge to acquit Ms. Dorsey on the homicide charge, even
though she admitted she had used a .22-caliber gun without a license.

Assistant District Attorney Michael Sullivan portrayed the shooting
as a straightforward, first-degree murder.

"This is not a self-defense case. This was an execution," he said.
"The commonwealth has shown beyond a reasonable doubt that she went
there intending to inflict deadly harm."

Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey A. Manning said he will rule today.

In about an hour on the witness stand, Ms. Dorsey testified that she
had once excelled in English and at basketball and dreamed of getting
a degree in psychology from Temple University.

At the time of the shooting, the 18-year-old's life was in a
tailspin. She was pregnant, dealing crack and dancing in a strip club.

She said Mr. Rankin was a regular customer who asked her for a $20
fix the morning of Sept. 26. Instead, she said, he ran off with her
entire stash of blue-dyed crack. She chased him, but gave up.

She then got a shared jitney ride from neighbor. After running two
other errands, the driver followed Ms. Dorsey's directions to the
7600 block of Tioga Street, where she thought she would find Mr.
Rankin. There Ms. Dorsey asked the driver to stop the car.

She and a friend got out to confront him. When Mr. Rankin refused to
return the drug, the dealer and her former client got into an
argument, Ms. Dorsey and other witnesses testified.

He cursed and spat at her and his face was twitching, Ms. Dorsey
recalled, and he said, "What you gonna do, shoot me?"

"He was high as hell and I thought, 'He's going to kill me if I don't
shoot him,'" she testified.

Ms. Dorsey wiped away tears as she described the next few seconds.
She thought he had a weapon concealed in his hand, although he did
not. She said she pulled a pistol from her shoe and shot twice at his
legs, missing. When he kept coming toward her, she shot two more
times, she said. The bullets hit the left side of his chest and the
top of his head.

A ballistics expert testified that the gunshot residue around the
head wound and on the victim's jacket were consistent with an
individual moving closer to the barrel of a gun.

Mr. Rankin, of East Liberty, had four convictions between 1991 and
2001 for resisting arrest, robbery, conspiracy to commit robbery and
simple assault.