NORRISTOWN, Pa. (KYW Newsradio) — The trial is underway for the Northeast Philadelphia man charged with murdering his 18-year-old ex-girlfriend at a train station in Abington last summer.
In July 2020 in the overflow parking lot at the Meadowbrook SEPTA Station, authorities say 19-year-old Gilbert Newton III stabbed 18-year-old Morgan McCaffery more than 30 times.
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On the first day of the trial Monday, jurors heard the 911 call Newton’s mother made to police. She told them her son “was covered in blood,” then added, “he says he hurt his girlfriend.”
A Philadephia police officer testified that when he got to the scene, Newton said he stabbed his girlfriend several times and “didn’t want to be in this world anymore.”
Jurors also saw autopsy photos of 40-plus stab and slash wounds.
Newton briefly glanced at the screen in the courtroom, then put his head on the table as the medical examiner described the wounds.
Prosecutors call his actions first-degree murder, saying he clearly planned it out.
In opening statements, prosecutor Gabrielle Hughes told the jury that the two had broken up, McCaffery was moving on, and, Hughes said, Newton had decided if he couldn’t have her, no one could.
She said Newton not only picked a secluded parking lot to meet McCaffery, but he also brought two knives from his mother’s kitchen.
Newton’s lawyer, Charles Peruto Jr., doesn’t dispute Newton is the killer — Newton’s mother called the police, he noted. However, he told the jury they should consider manslaughter rather than first-degree murder because Newton was meeting McCaffery not to hurt her, but to kill himself. Peruto said as the two talked, Newton was provoked, and he snapped.
First-degree murder has a mandatory life-in-prison sentence, while manslaughter has a maximum of 20 years.