Jury still undecided in case of deadly stabbing at downtown Raleigh convenience store
Jurors deliberated for roughly four hours Tuesday but did not reach a verdict in the trial of Taiseer “Taz” Zarka, the downtown Raleigh shopkeeper charged with second-degree murder for fatally stabbing a man he suspected of shoplifting.
The jury will continue its work on Wednesday morning.
The week-long trial has told competing stories of a fatal struggle inside Taz’s Market on a busy downtown street, leaving jurors to pick between a shopkeeper acting in self-defense or a violent overreaction to a minor crime.
A $3.39 bottle of blue Gatorade stood at the trial’s center.
In a rare move for a murder trial, Zarka took the stand in his own defense this week, testifying for three hours about the rash of thefts from Taz’s Market but also how victim Mark Thomas Garrity Jr. made him feel particularly threatened.
Zarka, 61, said he grabbed tightly on the 27-year-old man’s bag, but Garrity pulled him backward, swung at his head and tried to push him to the ground, at one point threatening him with a pistol. Throughout their struggle, Zarka said, Garrity tried to pry away his fingers.
“Pay for it or leave it on the counter: this is the standard,” Zarka said from the witness stand Monday. “But some people are from out of this world.”
Zarka’s attorney Karl Knudsen added that Garrity had both Fentanyl and cocaine in his system, according to toxicology reports, which may have fueled his aggressiveness.
But prosecutors pounced on this defense, noting that Zarka approached Garrity with a knife in his pocket without knowing for sure anything had been stolen. He brandished it several times and held it to Garrity’s face.
Zarka could have called police or closed the front door, prosecutors argued, but he chose to bring a weapon to fight an unarmed man holding a bag in one hand and ice cream in the other.
In closing arguments Monday, Assistant District Attorney Patrick Latour cast doubt on whether Garrity ever threatened Zarka with a gun, considering nobody else heard him mention a pistol and Garrity’s bag contained only clothes, toiletries and a cold Gatorade.
“Is what he did reasonable?” Latour asked in the courtroom. “He stabbed him three times. Is three reasonable? I’m going to submit to you that it’s not.”