Jury deliberates in Burnsville murder trial

Joy Powell

Nov. 4, 2009 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) -- A Dakota County jury this morning began deliberating whether 19-year-old Taylor Pass of Eagan murdered a friend, Tina SanRoman of Burnsville, and then tried to kill her roommate after he caught Pass stabbing the woman in her garage last April.

Prosecutor Lawrence Clark said the most compelling testimony in the eight-day trial came not from the witness stand, but from 911 recordings of a critically wounded mother hoarsely pleading, "Help me, I'm dying."

The tapes also recorded, Clark told the jury, that SanRoman was calling out to her roommate, Odai Al-Refo, to help her. That, Clark said, shows that Al-Refo was not the killer, as Pass' attorney has suggested.

"She's not asking for help from somebody who has stabbed her," Clark said. "She's asking for help from somebody in a similar situation."

The prosecutor said it was also understandable that the wounded mother had made her way into her house and that she would be found by police at the foot of her stairs, bleeding from a four-inch stab wound to the chest.

San Roman, 35, was struggling to get to her 9-year-old son, Brendon Kulyas, whom she could only hope was still sleeping upstairs. But, Clark added, the mother didn't know if her child was safe.

"It makes perfect sense she would try to get up those stairs," Clark said.

In Hastings, the jury is deliberating whether Pass committed second-degree murder and also whether he tried to kill Al-Refo, 24, who testified as the state's star witness.

Defense attorney Arlene Perkkio attacked the investigation by Burnsville police, saying that officers had decided within 10 seconds of getting to the scene that Pass, of Eagan, was the killer.

Burnsville police "made a rush to judgment," she said, and the officers decided from that point forth that they were not open to any other theories. And in doing that, she argued, the police probed the wrong man and didn't collect evidence, didn't get it all tested properly, and didn't share all of the lab results they did get with prosecutors or the defense until the trial was more than half over.

Perkkio also pointed to some unknown clothing found at SanRoman's home the night of the stabbing on April 7.

She noted there was unknown "wearers" DNA found on a grey hoodie sweatshirt in the house, along with a visor in the garage. That cap was black with orange flames on the sides and on the bill, and it had the word "Sniper" in large white lettering on the front. Those items had both the blood of SanRoman and Al-Refo on them, but also "touch DNA" from two or three more wearers, Perkkio said.

Whom those wearers could have been remains a mystery, according to the defense attorney.

"Someone else was in the mix, and because that was never investigated, we have reasonable doubt," Perkkio said.

Clark, however, had said that surveillance cameras from Shooters Billiards on Hwy. 13, where Pass was just before SanRoman was attacked, showed him wearing a hat with orange flames and a word that ended with "er" and appeared to possibly be the word "Sniper." The surveillance camera also recorded Pass wearing a sweatshirt that resembled one left in SanRoman's house on the night she was stabbed.

San Roman died a week after the stabbing. Al-Refo recovered and lives in North Carolina. The boy was uninjured.

Clark said that for jurors to consider what the defense claimed -- that Al-Refo had "concocted this story," and that he cut himself -- was "ridiculous." Clark referred to Perkkio's theory as invoking a "phantom suspect" and urged the jury to not speculate nor go on a "wild expedition."

After the jury left the courtroom, Perkkio told Judge Patrice Sutherland that she wanted it noted for the record that Perkkio believed Clark had made improper comments when he referred to her theory as "ridiculous" and a wild "expedition."

Perkkio told the judge that the comments "could be classified as prosecutorial misconduct."

Clark said that his comments were referring to how people like conspiracy theories. He said he had urged the jurors to not speculate about what they don't know as they search for the truth.

Joy Powell --952-882-9017

Newstex ID: KRTB-0281-39441626