Three people facing charges in the shooting death of a man on Woodford Street in April have pleaded not guilty, while a fourth man will enter his plea Tuesday.
Damion Butterfield, 22, Anthony Osborne, 45, and Jonathan Geisinger, 45, all pleaded not guilty to murder and robbery-related charges Monday. The Attorney General’s Office, which is prosecuting all four cases, is arguing that the men are responsible for the death of Derald Coffin, who was shot and killed early on the morning of April 26 during what another victim, Annabelle Hartnett, said was an attempted robbery.
Butterfield was indicted in July on one count of knowing or intentional murder, and another count of attempted murder for the injury to Hartnett. Butterfield was also indicted on one count of robbery and one count of possessing a firearm he wasn’t supposed to have.
A Range Rover is loaded onto a flatbed tow truck as a Portland police officer examines the ground near it on Woodford Street in Portland after a man was killed and a woman injured in a shooting around 1 a.m. on April 26. Three of the four defendants facing murder and robbery charges in the case entered pleas of not guilty Monday. Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer
Osborne, Geisinger and Thomas MacDonald, who will enter a plea Tuesday morning, each faces one count of felony murder and one count of robbery. Felony murder is used to hold people responsible for a homicide that occurred during the commission of another crime, even if the defendant did not directly cause the death.
Police announced in early June they were charging Butterfield, Osborne and MacDonald. Geisinger is the fourth person to face charges in Coffin’s death.
Hartnett, who was with Coffin when both were shot, told the Portland Press Herald in May that she believed Osborne was responsible for organizing the attempted robbery and the shooting.
According to what Hartnett recalled, she and Coffin were driving toward Woodford Street after midnight on April 26, with Osborne in the car. Osborne, known to Hartnett as “Bear” at the time, had allegedly asked both for heroin that he could resell from an apartment on Cumberland Avenue. Coffin and Hartnett told Osborne they had nothing to give him.
Osborne then asked where the two were headed. Hartnett told the Portland Press Herald she later heard Osborne on the phone, sharing their whereabouts with someone else on the line.
The group was parked outside Coffin’s apartment on Woodford Street, sitting inside the car and smoking, when three men approached the vehicle from behind. They pulled Coffin out from the car and shot him twice. A gunman tried shooting Hartnett in the head, but the bullet missed her by inches. Another bullet ripped through her upper arm.
As the gunman fled for Back Cove, Osborne stayed behind to ask Hartnett to give him drugs before the police arrived, Hartnett said.
Days after his death, Coffin was described by family members as a hard worker who kept his loved ones close. He struggled with addiction but was telling relatives he wanted to go home, to where he grew up in Bath, and get clean.
“(Darry) looked good and happy and was making plans,” his brother, Frank Coffin, told the Portland Press Herald in late April. “But he didn’t come home in time and someone shot him.”
Cumberland County Superior Court Justice MaryGay Kennedy has ordered that Butterfield be held without bail. Kennedy has set the other three men’s bail at $500,000.
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