The fiancée of slain hip-hop artist Jafar “Young Farr” Lewis witnessed her man get shot and killed more than three years ago but still remembers the vivid details as if it happened yesterday.
Testifying under oath Thursday at Wayne Bush’s murder trial, Twanna Robinson said she was sitting in the passenger’s seat of her Infiniti FX45 on the night of Aug. 23, 2013, and saw Bush raise his arm toward Lewis and “immediately heard two gunshots.”
“I ducked down in my car,” she said on the witness stand. “I was shocked. I didn’t expect to hear that.”
After hearing back-to-back gunshots, Robinson looked over at Bush and saw him standing tall above Lewis, who was lying motionless on the ground on Middle Rose Street near Brunswick Avenue in Trenton, according to her testimony. She said that Bush was wearing a black hoodie and appeared to be “in a daze, looking down” and that she started screaming, “You going to jail!”
Bush fled in a vehicle by driving in reverse in the wrong direction up the one-way Middle Rose Street toward Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, according to Robinson’s testimony.
Wayne Bush
Robinson, 38, has known Bush since high school but had never had any problems with him or his family prior to that night, she said. After Lewis, 26, was gunned down about 9:20 p.m., Robinson said she had shouted “Waynie shot Farr!” so that everyone who gathered at the scene would know what happened.
“Everybody was crying,” Robinson said Thursday, recalling the mood of the moment. “Everybody was yelling. Everybody was going off.”
Bush, 39, has been held in custody on $1 million bail ever since he surrendered to the authorities on Aug. 30, 2013. He has been charged with murder, possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose and unlawful possession of a weapon.
Prosecutors say Lewis owed Bush a significant amount of money, fueling a dispute over cash that allegedly motivated Bush to unlawfully obtain a handgun and use it in an ambush-style attack against the victim, who was an up-and-coming hip-hop lyricist who went by the stage name Young Farr.
John Furlong, Bush’s defense attorney, questioned Robinson Thursday under cross-examination. He asked the eyewitness whether she had deleted much of her Facebook posts from August 2013 and September 2013 and Robinson responded, “I could have.”
Then Furlong got Robinson to acknowledge that she had met with prosecutors multiple times to practice her testimony prior to Bush’s murder trial.
Furlong also got Robinson to acknowledge that she had filed a criminal complaint against Bush’s mother alleging terroristic threats — a complaint that was eventually dismissed after Robinson failed to show up in court.
The families had long been acquainted. Wayne Bush was engaged to Jafar Lewis’s cousin, Ghadah Lewis, at the time of the murder.
With the jurors paying close attention to the cross-examination, Furlong asked Robinson if she had pleaded guilty to credit card fraud — referring to a case from about 15 years ago when Robinson was indicted on 19 counts and reached a plea deal to get most counts dismissed in exchange for an admission of guilt and a sentence of two years of probation.
“I pleaded guilty to a credit card charge,” Robinson said during her testimony on Thursday.
Bush’s murder trial is expected to be lengthy. A jury of his peers has committed to serving up through Thursday, April 13.