Wilkinsburg man pleads to manslaughter after friend is killed in drug deal gone bad

A Wilkinsburg man with ties to two high-profile cases pleaded guilty Wednesday to involuntary manslaughter in an unrelated shooting.

Demetres Beck, 26, admitted to Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Edward J. Borkowski that he and a friend, Kierre Simmons, participated in a robbery on Dec. 29, 2014.

According to Deputy District Attorney Ilan Zur, Beck and Simmons went to a home in North Braddock to buy marijuana that day, but then pulled guns and tried to rob the two men selling it.

Police said Beck pulled the trigger first, and the sellers had guns and returned fire.

Simmons, 25, of Shadyside, was killed.

Beck was ordered to serve 2-1/2 to five years in prison to be followed by three years probation.

Defense attorney Casey White said his client has already serve 55 months in custody.

During the hearing, Beck apologized to the court for his actions.

“I was a child then,” he said.

He told the court that his experience over the last four years has taught him important life lessons.

Beck was one of seven people charged in a shooting that occurred during a vigil on Monticello Street in Homewood on Sept. 16, 2015, that injured a 49-year-old woman, a 12-year-old girl and a 3-year-old boy.

White said that Beck was not at the vigil shooting, and the charges against him for that case were withdrawn by the prosecution this week.

“He never left the house,” White said.

The Allegheny County District Attorney’s office withdrew charges against five of the other defendants in that case last year, shortly after a separate Wilkinsburg mass shooting trial ended in the acquittal of Cheron Shelton.

In that case, Shelton and Robert Thomas were charged in the March 9, 2016, shooting deaths of five adults and one unborn child during a cookout at a home on Franklin Avenue in Wilkinsburg.

It was evidence in Beck’s case that ultimately led to charges being dropped against Thomas in that case.

White represented Thomas, and as that case was approaching trial, White was going through evidence he’d received from prosecutors against Beck when he found exculpatory evidence in the Wilkinsburg case.

That evidence included a videotaped interview with a man who had been identified as Witness No. 3, who was supposed to testify against Thomas and Shelton.

The defense and prosecution in the Wilkinsburg case sparred over the evidence for several days and over several hearings, before ultimately, the prosecution said it would not call Witness No. 3 to testify, and the charges against Thomas were thrown out by Judge Edward J. Borkowski.

White called the plea on Wednesday the appropriate resolution.

“Now he can put all of this behind him.”