WEST CHESTER — The man who shot a Chester County basketball player in front of the Historic Chester County Courthouse was legally justified in his use of force against the man, a Common Pleas Court jury has ruled.
The defendant, Vaughn Yanko, was found not guilty of all charges late Wednesday night after the jury of seven men and five women deliberated for about 3½ hours. They returned to Judge Allison Bell Royer’s courtroom around d 10:30 p.m.
Yanko, 23, of Thornbury, was acquitted on charges of attempted first-degree murder, aggravated assault, recklessly endangering another person, simple assault and possession of an instrument of a crime. The defense — led by veteran defense attorney Dan Bush of the West Chester law firm of Lamb McErlane — contended that Yanko had been attacked by a large group of men and was forced to defend himself by firing a single shot from the handgun he had with him at the time.
“I’m super happy for Vaughn,” Bush said in an e-mail Thursday. “This young man and his family have been through unimaginable things since he was attacked that night. Thank you to the jury for their dedication to the case. And thank you to the members of the West Chester Police Department who were on the scene within seconds. They did an amazing job that evening, particularly Detective Aaron Davis.”
Davis was lauded at the time for his quick thinking and training in gunshot wounds that led him to drive the shooting victim, 21-year-old Ivon Bennett of New Jersey, from the scene of the shooting to the Chester County Hospital without waiting for an ambulance. Davis’ decision, along with the medical staff at the West Goshen hospital and Penn Presbyterian Hospital in Philadelphia, where he was flown by helicopter, was said to have helped save Bennett’s life.
Bennett, now 22, who was a member of the University of Valley Forge’s basketball team at the time, spent 50 days in the hospital, mostly in a coma, and 10 months rehabilitating from his internal injuries. He survived, but carries scars from his neck to his toes from the after affects of the gunshot.
District Attorney Chris deBarrena-Sarobe issued a statement Thursday praising the jury’s work on the six-day long case. “I want to thank the jury for their service on this case,” he said in an email. “Although we had hoped for a different result, the jury worked well into the night to consider a week of testimony and we respect their verdict.”
The case pitted two competing scenarios of what happened outside the courthouse on North High Street in West Chester on a cold night in January 2023.
The prosecution, led by Deputy District Attorney Bridget Gallagher, contended that Yanko, then a mechanical engineering student at Temple University, had goaded Bennett and his teammates into a confrontation after a night of bar hopping with his cousin and another man. When Bennett came near him, he drew the .380 Ruger he had in his jacket pocket and fired a single shot into his abdomen.
“He baited them into a fight,” she told the jurors in Judge Allison Bell Royer’s courtroom in her opening statement last week. “It was a fight that he knew he could win, because he had a secret weapon in his pocket — a gun.”
She said that by firing at Bennett point blank from several feet away with little provocation, Yanko showed that he intended to kill the man he did not know. “In his own words, he admitted it,” she said. “He said he shot ‘center mass.’”
The provocation was an important distinction in the prosecution’s case. In Pennsylvania, people are legally entitled to use deadly force if they believe that such force is immediately necessary for the purpose of protecting themselves against the use of unlawful force by another person at the time.
But that use of force is not justified, according to the law, if the person provoked the use of force against themselves. It is also not permitted if the person can safely retreat from the aggressor. In her cross examination of Yanko on Wednesday, Gallagher had asked why he did not turn away from Bennett and his friends. “It did not occur to me that I could turn and walk away,” he said.
In his argument that the use of deadly force was justified, Bush noted that the law grants the person using force to make the determination on their own if they are in danger of death or serious bodily injury, even in a split second. Yanko testified that he was encircled by Bennett and his friends, and that Bennett “body slammed” him to the ground in front of the courthouse steps. Yanko drew his pistol and fired, he said, in a matter of a half second.
“This wasn’t a fight,” he told the jurors. “This was a vicious, one-sided attack … with Ivon Bennett leading the charge.” Bush said Bennett had tackled the much smaller Yanko and was aiming to hurt him when his client pulled the gun he had registered to carry and fired.
“You are allowed to defend yourself,” Bush said. “That is exactly what happened In this case.”
The trial in front of Royer saw six days of testimony including from Yanko, his cousin, Bennett and his teammates, as well as West Chester police officers who responded to the scene of the shooting. The jurors also were shown several surveillance camera videos and police dash and body cameras, including a dark, grainy video of the confrontation itself taken from a pole camera across the street from the courthouse.
Yanko and Bennett were part of two groups of men who faced off against each other around 2:15 a.m. on Jan 22, 2023 on the front plaza of the courthouse, after apparently exchanging “trash talk.” Yanko and his cousin, Chris “Max” Armenti, had gone there with a third man they had met that night, Jacob Vickars, to “chill” after a night of clubbing in West Chester. It was Yanko’s 22nd birthday, and all three had been drinking.
Coincidentally, they had just come from Barnaby’s Restaurant and Pub, where Bennett and his teammates — Matt Altamirano, D’Andre Butler, Bennie Howard, Hunter Wilson, Adonnis McGill and trainer Chris Saint-Hilaire — had met up to walk to a local calzone shop for a late night snack.
The surveillance video showed Yanko and his group on the plaza in front of the courthouse’s columned portico as Bennett and his group walk north towards Gay Street. Then, Bennett jumps over the stone wall in the courthouse front and the other follow suit, standing in front of Yanko. Yanko said that the group of basketball players had been angered when Armenti, who he said was highly intoxicated, insulted them.
The video shows a scuffle, including Altamirano punching Armenti in the face, and then Bennett and his group scattering away after Yanko fired his shot. Police body cameras captured the group instantly afterwards, with Bennett pulling up his sweatshirt to show where he had been shot.
The prosecution’s case was hampered in part by the basketball players either not being able to remember what had led up to the shooting or making statements that bolstered the defense case. McGill, for example, agreed with Bush when the attorney asked if he had seen Bennett “trading punches” with Yanko.
Bennett himself testified that he had no recollection of the events of the night, besides the fact that he was shot after some arguing. He now works in New Jersey as a youth basketball trainer, and hopes to return to Valley Forge to earn his degree.
For her part, Gallagher was able to point out inconsistencies in Yanko’s testimony compared with what he told police investigators the morning of the shooting. He expressed surprise at hearing that Armenti had been punched, and that his handgun was not “hot,” with a bullet loaded in the chamber. On the stand, he said both of those statements were made in a fog afterwards and were not true.
Yanko had come to carry a firearm with him after his father had given him on for his 21st birthday as a way of protecting himself while in North Philadelphia, the site of the Temple Campus. That gun, a 9mm Glock, was too bulky, so he switched it for the .38-caliber Ruger in November 2022.
“It kind of became habitual,” he said of carrying the weapon in his coat pocket. “It was no big deal.”
To contact staff writer Michael P. Rellahan call 610-696-1544.
West Chester police officer saves life of shooting victim along High Street
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