Penn Student On Trial for Murder

A junior at the University of Pennsylvania has been formally charged with attempted murder after his arrest last week.

Bryan Warner, a 20-year-old history major, will attend a preliminary hearing tomorrow morning where a judge will decide whether there is enough evidence to detain him before trial.

According to the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, Warner faces multiple charges, including attempted murder, aggravated assault, carrying a firearm without a license, carrying a firearm in a public street, possessing an instrument of crime, terrorist threats, simple assault, and reckless endangerment of another person.

Warner is accused of shooting a 40-year-old man, who is unaffiliated with the university, in a restaurant on 52nd Street, about 10 blocks west of Penn’s campus.

Philadelphia Police Lt. John Walker said it’s unclear whether Warner and the victim knew each other.

The victim sustained a gunshot wound to his leg and is still recuperating.

Warner’s lawyer, Richard Harris, could not be reached for comment, but told The Daily Pennsylvanian and The Philadelphia Inquirer that Warner is completely innocent.

Harris said to The Daily Pennsylvanian that the victim purposely identified the wrong man because he knew the real assailant well and was afraid of retaliation. Warner’s picture was in the system because of charges of assault made—and subsequently dropped—against him in January after he was involved in a fight.

He also claims Warner has an alibi for being 20 blocks away from the scene of the crime at the time.

Student are skeptical of the charges against Warner.

“It’s a case of mistaken identity that’s been blown out of proportion and I’d prefer not to comment on it,” said the President of the Penn chapter of the co-ed St. Elmo’s fraternity, of which Warner was an active member.

“I guess it’s not really that big a story,” said Molly Larkin, a junior at Penn who does not know Warner personally. “I think it’s pretty much accepted that it’s not correct. All his friends were like, ‘He was with us the whole night.’”

“So many other things don’t match up, like he doesn’t own any clothes that match the clothing description,” Larkin said, adding that she thought the methods for identifying him seem a bit shady.

Warner was arrested and charged on Feb. 8 after his photograph was identified for the second time by the victim and somebody Walker described as “an independent witness”. He was released last Thursday for $50,000 bail and was allowed to attend his classes this week, according to Phyllis Holtzmann of the University of Pennsylvania’s Communications Office.

“We really don’t have enough information at this point to make any other kinds of decisions,” Holtzmann said of how the charges or a possible conviction might affect his status at the college.

If held at the hearing tomorrow, he will face trial within 21 days.

“With the sort of charges he’s on, the maximum time he could be facing [if convicted] would be around 20 years,” said Walker. The Distric Attorney’s office would not speculate on a possible sentence.

The hearing comes just over a year after another undergraduate at Penn was prosecuted in a murder trial. Then-senior Irina Malinovskaya was accused of murdering her ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend. A mistrial was ruled this past Monday as only an 11-1 decision was reached.

—Staff Writer John R. Macartney can be reached at jmacartn@fas.harvard.edu.