SURVIVORS RECOUNT FOR 2 JURIES DETAILS OF KILLINGS ABOVE DELI

Rosemond Dane told two juries yesterday that something "didn't seem right"
when two men entered her friend's apartment above the Carnegie
Delicatessen. The tension that froze everyone else in the room. The heavy
coats on a hot summer day.

There was one other clue, Ms. Dane testified at the trials of the two men
accused of shooting five people in the apartment on May 10, 2001: the way
her friend, Jennifer Stahl, had second thoughts after deciding to buzz one
of the men up, saying, "I don't think I should have let him in."

Those were among the last words spoken by Ms. Stahl, a former actress who
had turned to singing and selling high-grade marijuana. Minutes later, she
was dead of a gunshot wound to the head, as were Ms. Dane's boyfriend,
Charles Helliwell III, 36, and another guest, Stephen King, 32.

The chilling testimony from Ms. Dane and the other survivor, Anthony
Veader, were the first eyewitness accounts of a casual get-together that
turned into a bloodbath. They gave their testimony in State Supreme Court
in Manhattan, before a packed courtroom and the two defendants, Sean Salley
and Andre Smith, who are being tried before separate juries.

The jurors also watched a videotape of Mr. Salley's statement to the
police, in which he said that the visit to Ms. Stahl's apartment was meant
to be a robbery, but that the plans went wrong almost as soon as he and Mr.
Smith entered the top-floor apartment near Seventh Avenue and 55th Street.

"When their presence was made, when their energy entered the room, everyone
was on high alert immediately," Ms. Dane testified, recalling how the men
began to pull things out of their coats. First she saw duct tape, she said.
Then she saw a gun.

Ms. Dane said that she tried to run away down a narrow hallway, but that
Mr. Smith - the "broad-shouldered one" - pulled her back into the cramped
living room where he waved his gun and ordered everyone onto the floor with
hands behind their backs.

Mr. Smith, who was holding the gun, took Ms. Stahl into her recording
studio, where she ran her marijuana business, Ms. Dane said, while Mr.
Salley - who she said was thinner and dark-skinned and had braided hair -
bound the four guests with duct tape.

Ms. Dane testified that her face was on the carpeted floor when she heard
Ms. Stahl pleading from the studio: "Don't hurt anyone! Take everything and
leave!"

Ms. Dane said that before her wrists were bound, she eyed the front door,
thinking of escape, but that Mr. Salley said to her, "Don't even think
about going there," and ordered her to get her head down.

She begged for sympathy, saying that she was pregnant - a lie - but her
hands were bound like Mr. Helliwell's and Mr. Veader's.

She could not see what happened next, she said. But Mr. Salley, in his
taped testimony, said that Mr. Smith then gave him the gun and that they
switched places. According to Mr. Salley, Mr. Smith said: "Point it at
her," meaning Ms. Stahl. Mr. Salley said that he had been pointing the gun
at the ground, and that when he lifted it he was so nervous that he
accidentally fired. Ms. Stahl fell.

"At the time I was so scared, I hoped she had just fainted," Mr. Salley
said, adding that he dropped the gun and started making his way out of the
apartment. "My head was so boggled, all I could think of was to get out of
there." He said that, on his way out, he heard four more shots and kept
running.

By Mr. Smith's account, however, he was nowhere near the apartment on the
night of the shootings, according to his lawyer's opening remarks. Mr.
Smith maintains that the authorities have the wrong man.

Ms. Dane testified that while she was on the floor she heard the shot that
killed Ms. Stahl and almost immediately, two more shots. There was one more
to come - for her. "I felt a gun on the back of my head," she said. "Before
I could think to do anything, I screamed, 'No!' and threw my head back and
over to the side to try to see, but I was shot."

She then heard a door slam, and was amazed to be awake, not dead. Since her
feet were not bound, she stood and ran to the others.

Mr. Veader, a film and television hair stylist who said he had been at the
apartment to cut Ms. Stahl's hair and also buy marijuana, testified that he
was lying on the floor in great pain and praying. Like Ms. Dane, he had
flinched at the last second, so the bullet only grazed his head. His
testimony is expected to continue today.

Ms. Dane said she saw Mr. Veader reach for his cell phone and call 911.
Then she knelt beside Mr. Helliwell. They lived together in the Virgin
Islands and had been visiting New York City for a wedding, and were staying
overnight with Ms. Stahl.

"I put my hands on him and he exhaled," Ms. Dane said, "and I thought then
to free his hands and while I was kneeling with him a minute or two, I knew
that I was losing him. I knew he was dying."

She whimpered as she described the vomit and blood around the head of Mr.
King, a musician who had stopped by to use Ms. Stahl's recording studio. He
was unconscious, she said, and she could see where he had been shot.

On the stand, Ms. Dane spoke slowly and carefully, trying to maintain her
composure but losing it several times. As she broke down, loud gasps and
crying could be heard from the rows of relatives and friends who had
squeezed themselves into the back rows of the courtroom.

"This has been the hardest day," said one of Ms. Stahl's friends, Katya
Surrence. "Everyone wanted to hear what really happened, but the horror of
it is so terrible."