Testimony got underway Tuesday in the trial of a Clifton Heights man accused of what District Attorney Tanner Rouse described as the “heinous, senseless” murder of a teenager on an Upper Darby street in April 2023.
Marson Weh, 26, of the 100 block of Willowbrook Road, is charged with murder in the first and third degree and possessing an instrument of crime with intent in the stabbing death of 15-year-old Michael Garr in the 200 block of Bridge Street on April 21, 2023.
“This is the knife he used to stab and slash Michael Garr 11 times,” Rouse said in opening statements, holding the murder weapon up for the jury to see. “This is the knife that he plunged into that 15-year-old boy’s throat. This is the knife he used to murder that boy. You will know that, because this is also the knife where Michael Garr’s blood was found.”
Weh was arrested in May 2023 on an Ohio carjacking and assault. He has already been convicted and sentenced to 9½ years in prison in that case.
He was charged with Garr’s murder in early 2024, along with a separate attempted murder of a pregnant woman. That trial is scheduled for next month.
As Rouse laid out in his opening, Weh stalked Garr the night of his death, following him from Clifton Heights into Upper Darby. Video surveillance captured some of their movements and at one point Weh’s face is clearly visible, Rouse said.
The two are very close shortly before they reach the point where Garr was stabbed, Rouse said, though that happened about 20 yards out of the camera frame.
Weh was wearing a black backpack with reflective stripes and Rouse said a white cuff could be seen on his left leg. After the stabbing, he said Weh could be seen taking off the backpack as if to place something inside of it.
That was where police found the knife with Garr’s DNA on it, he said. They also found the white cuff was actually thermal leggings and that there was a brownish spot on the inner thigh. Weh was wearing the leggings when he was arrested and a test of that spot came back as positive for Garr’s blood, Rouse said.
Rouse said Garr and Weh had “no earthly connection” and there was no reason for the teen’s blood and DNA to be on anything Weh owned aside from the obvious conclusion: That he was Michael Garr’s killer.
Rouse said that typically he would be able to provide the jury with some sort of narrative that explained why this happened, but there was no backstory to this case.
“There is nothing that led to this,” he said. “This is the kind of random, senseless, terrifying act of violence that we like to pretend — that we need to pretend — doesn’t happen. But we know that it does.”
In his opening, defense counsel Ian McCurdy did not offer any explanation, only reminding the jury that as Weh sits in court, he is still cloaked in the presumption of innocence.
The jury heard first from Upper Darby Patrolman Thomas Gardner, who said he responded to the scene within about two minutes of getting notification from dispatch of a stabbed juvenile losing consciousness.
Gardner said he arrived to see another man with Garr holding a towel to his neck and took over providing life-saving measures. Additional officers soon arrived, followed by medics, Gardner said. Garr was pronounced dead at the scene.
He described Garr as being in “grave, grave condition” when he arrived. He said he had never seen anything like it.
Gardner said on cross-examination that he did not see anyone else on the street as he headed south on Burmont Road toward the scene, only a woman a few doors down who was standing outside.
Garr’s girlfriend also testified that they were hanging out that night at Clifton Field and that they walked to the intersection of Springfield Road and Baltimore Pike, where they headed in different directions.
She was 17 at the time and had been dating Garr for about two months. She tearfully said he was very kind and generous, just a good person. She never saw him again.
Jurors also heard from the man who was helping Garr when Gardner arrived, as well as his frantic 911 call.
The man said he was driving home from Philadelphia that night headed north on Bridge Street when he saw a kid jogging to his left, going in the same direction. As they reached the corner of Brunswick Avenue, the driver said he stopped intending to turn left but was waiting for the teen to cross.
Instead, he said Garr noticed him and ran up to his car with his hands around his throat.
“He was trying to communicate with me but couldn’t say anything,” the man said. “He couldn’t really speak. He was trying to. …When he moved his hands, blood came spraying out of his neck.”
The man said he immediately got out of the car and called 911, putting the phone on speaker and placing it on the ground so he could attend to Garr. He said he grabbed a rag and put pressure on his neck wound, but Garr was soon in and out of consciousness.
At one point, he said Garr was able to get out three words: “He stabbed me” and pointed south on Bridge. The man said he had not noticed anyone else on the street.
“Mr. Garr was by himself until I was with him,” he said. “There wasn’t a soul around.”
In the 911 call, the man can be heard telling Garr to hang on and to stay with him. He said one woman came out of a nearby house to help, but the scene was too much for her and she ran off.
None of the witnesses said they saw Weh that night. The defendant, who had at one point been deemed incompetent to stand trial, could be seen muttering to himself at the defense table.
Testimony is expected to resume Wednesday.