By John McCann

jmccann@heraldsun.com; 419-6601

DURHAM -- A jury on Friday began deliberating and on Monday will continue working toward a verdict in Thaddius R. Wright's retrial on charges of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill inflicting serious injury and first-degree burglary.

"When you run with the pack, you're responsible for the kill," Assistant District Attorney Stormy Ellis said during closing arguments.

Wright, 27, has been on trial again for his role in a November 2004 shooting at Foxfire Apartments in north Durham. A jury in 2006 found him guilty of shooting Rueben Garnett Jr. and burglarizing the apartment he was in. Wright appealed the ruling based on racial bias during the jury-selection process.

Jerred D. Thompson and Jarrad L. Bishop were convicted as a result of the crimes at Foxfire Apartments. Those crimes occurred around 3 a.m. or 4 a.m., the time when Garnett and two more people in the apartment expected to be safe and sound, Ellis told jurors. But Wright and the crew he was with snatched that blanket of security off them, the assistant district attorney said.

Defense lawyer Woodrena Baker-Harrell acknowledged her client was with Thompson and Bishop during those wee hours when the shooting occurred. Wright in a statement to a Durham police officer even said he kicked the door of the targeted apartment. But Wright got scared and ran back to the car and sat down, his lawyer said.

"When he sat down, that made him not guilty," Baker-Harrell said.

Ellis already had argued that Wright at the very least acted in concert with Thompson and Bishop to kill another human being. Three guns and two walkie-talkies linked to the crime scene show premeditation, the assistant district attorney said. So while Baker-Harrell claimed her client was trying to back out of the criminal plot, "the evidence tells us a much different story," Ellis said.

Baker-Harrell wanted to talk about those guns, particularly the shell casings from one of the weapons located near the car that contained Wright, Thompson and Bishop when it crashed after a high-speed chase with the police.

"The weapon closest to Mr. Wright didn't match anything in that apartment," Baker-Harrell said.

There wasn't enough testing for gunshot residue to prove Wright fired any shots during the altercation, and no one who was in the apartment has identified Wright as the shooter, Baker-Harrell said.

"That's reasonable doubt, ladies and gentlemen," Baker-Harrell said.