Omar Cash’s personal motto must be, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”
That’s exactly what the convicted murderer and permanent prison inmate did last week when he testified in his own defense in yet another murder trial — this one involving the execution-style killing of a married father of one outside a Frankford Avenue car wash in 2008.
Defense attorneys usually advise their clients not to testify, figuring that it generally does more harm than good to allow a prosecutor to cross-examine a defendant. But Cash doesn’t seem to mind.
In 2010, he took the stand in Bucks County and ended up with a first-degree murder conviction. The jury sentenced him to life in prison without parole.
Last Thursday, a Philadelphia jury convicted Cash, 31, of first-degree murder for the April 21, 2008, shooting death of Muliek Ronald Brown at Winning Edge Car Wash, 3770 Frankford Ave. The sentencing phase began on Tuesday with Cash facing the death penalty.
In his latest testimony, Cash reportedly blamed the victim for the shooting, claiming that Brown was part of a gang that had previously shot at him. It was “kill or be killed,” Cash reportedly said.
Cash admitted that he shot Brown, 19, in the back of the head as Brown stooped to polish the rims on his car.
In the earlier Bucks County case, Cash was convicted of carjacking an immigrant carpenter and his Brazilian-American girlfriend outside a Frankford nightclub, forcing them to drive to a motel on Old Lincoln Highway in Trevose, killing the man, dumping his body along a U.S. 1 off-ramp and driving the woman to another motel in Lawrenceville, N.J. Cash raped the woman repeatedly. After she escaped, he fled to New York, where police arrested him days later.
After his June 2, 2010, sentencing in that case, Cash reportedly declared to bystanders as he departed the Doylestown courtroom, “Come down to Philly in a couple months and we’ll do it all again.” ••
