Murder Trial's Reluctant Witness Caught in Stolen Car: Cops

A jailhouse snitch who turned yellow when it was time for him to testify got caught in a stolen car Thursday night, police said.

Marshaun Gaston, 32, was arrested after a police sergeant allegedly saw him and a 37-year-old woman get into a Dodge Spark that had been stolen in Chicago.

The car was parked on Third Avenue when Gaston got behind the wheel shortly before midnight, police said.

Gaston reportedly explained to the sergeant that he had been renting the new Spark for the last four or five days, paying an unidentified man $20 each morning and another $20 each night to drive it.

Gaston had been using the car to get back and forth from his warehouse job in Elwood, police said.

Gaston was charged with criminal trespass to a motor vehicle and released on his own recognizance. Detectives are reportedly searching for the man who had been renting the stolen car to Gaston.

In July, Gaston was called to testify at the murder trial of 22-year-old Daeviontae Pruitte. From the witness stand, Gaston recounted a two-year-old conversation he had with Pruitte while they were both locked up in the Will County jail, telling how Pruitte boasted of committing a shooting.

Gaston said he asked Pruitte what he had been arrested for.

“A banger,” Gaston recalled Pruitte telling him, and explained that meant a gun. He later said Pruitte confided, “I just got to bustin’,” which translates to shooting the firearm.

Three months or so before Gaston and Pruitte had their talk, someone walked up to a car parked outside the Center Street Wendy’s and opened fire on the man sitting behind the wheel. The ambushed man, 54-year-old Timothy Egner, was killed. Pruitte was charged with his murder.

Gaston was supposed to testify two weeks earlier but never showed up to court. The Joliet police captured him in Chicago a week later. Judge Carla Alessio-Policandriotes then ordered Gaston to be held at the county jail until he testified.

Detective John Ross and public defender Amy Christiansen told the judge that Gaston claimed he was afraid to testify against Pruitte.

“He said he was scared, he had been threatened,” Ross said.

A week after Gaston testified, Judge Alessio-Policandriotes found Pruitte not guilty of the murder. She said prosecutors failed to prove that Pruitte shot down Timothy Egner, 54, outside the Center Street Wendy’s, but did concede that they established Pruitte got caught with the gun used in the murder.

Alessio-Policandriotes found Pruitte not guilty in spite of a prosecutor telling her the alleged murderer was recorded referring to himself as the “killer” and the “little killer” during jailhouse telephone conversations. One of Pruitte’s attorneys, Jason Strzelecki, explained to the judge that calling oneself a “killer” is merely a slang expression and similar to referring to oneself as a “player.”