Coatesville man shot at Regency Park Apartments

COATESVILLE >> A city man who’s had previous run-ins with the law suffered a non-fatal shooting at the Regency Park Apartments on Monday night, and he’s now in intensive care.

Police were called to the 600 block of Victoria Drive at approximately 9:47 p.m. for a shooting, and upon arrival, officers located 25-year-old Jamil Battle, who was shot once in the lower back, police said.

Battle was then transported to Paoli Hospital, where he underwent surgery and is currently in the intensive care unit, police said.

Coatesville Police Chief Jack Laufer said Battle was found inside an apartment when police arrived on the scene, but it’s unclear where Battle was when he was shot.

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Neighbors reported witnessing a vehicle fleeing the scene immediately after the shooting, but an accurate description of the suspected vehicle was not yet available, Laufer said.

Several bullets struck the apartment building, as well as the doors and window around the entrance to apartments 615 and 616 on Victoria Drive. Approximately 11 shell casings were located in a parking lot across the street from the apartment building.

Coatesville, Valley, West Brandywine and Pennsylvania State Police departments responded to the shooting.

Coatesville Police said the investigation into this incident remains ongoing, and they are seeking assistance from the public. Anyone who witnessed the shooting or has information about it is urged to contact the Coatesville Police Department at 610-384-2300 or send an anonymous text with the keyword “Coatesville” to 847411.

Battle had previously been accused of shooting a 24-year-old man in the leg during a robbery around 1:20 a.m. on Jan. 30, 2015 near North Eighth Avenue and East Diamond Street, according to testimony in the Chester County Court of Common Pleas. Police had said Battle shot Travis Boyer when Boyer failed to comply with his demands in the robbery, which he allegedly committed with another man who was never identified.

Boyer testified that he had walked by the man who robbed him as the man stood outside the Midway Bar on East Lincoln Highway, smoking a cigarette, a few minutes before the robbery. He described his assailant as being about 6-feet tall, wearing a dark cap and dark clothing with a “Muslim-style” beard and mustache.

However, a jury ultimately found Battle not guilty on Oct. 27, 2015, after his defense contended that the victim in the case had mistakenly identified him to Coatesville Police, owing to the weight of stress and confusion in pointing him out in a photo line-up.

Police had called Battle “armed and extremely dangerous” when he was being sought for the January 2015 robbery.

In addition to facing a separate weapons charge stemming from the shooting, Battle also had a parole detainer from an earlier conviction for robbery. He had allegedly made threats to engage in a shoot-out with police if they attempted to arrest him in January 2015.

Battle’s attorney, Assistant Public Defender Kristine Mehok, urged the jury to find her client not guilty because of the unreliability of eyewitness testimony in cases such as his. She also had presented another witness who said he had seen the shooting and that Battle was not the man who committed the crime.

This trial was also the first time in Chester County that a ‘memory expert’ was called forth to give expert testimony for a trial.

To bolster her case about the unreliability of eyewitness testimony, Mehok called Susan Mannis, a forensic psychology professor at Widener University who was qualified as an expert on memory issues and bias in identification.

Mannis, who did not speak directly about the identification in Battle’s case, said that generally those witnesses or victims who are involved in violent crime that involves a gun or other weapons, and that takes place at night when visibility is low, can make mistakes in their memory about what they saw and who else was involved.

Such expert testimony had never before been offered at trial in the county, observers said. It was unclear after the verdict whether the jury accepted the identity as mistaken, or based its verdict on other factors.

According to court records, Battle had also been sentenced to five to 10 years in prison in July 2009 for committing another armed robbery in the city. At a subsequent trial that ended with a hung jury in that case, Battle’s attorney also argued that the victim had been mistaken in identifying him, saying a T-shirt with a marijuana leaf that the robber wore and which Battle was wearing when arrested was a common sight in the city.

Daily Local News staff writer Michael P. Rellahan contributed to this report.