Three To Face Trial in Beating Death at Phillies Game

By Mike Newall
Add Comment Add Comment | Comments: 0 | Posted Aug. 5, 2009

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The three Fishtown thugs who allegedly stomped another man to death at a Phillies game last month will stand trail for murder, a Common Pleas Court Judge ruled Wednesday. Almost a dozen witnesses provided sometimes contradictory testimony at the preliminary hearing for the fatal beating of David Sale Jr. -- a 22-year-old killed after an argument over spilt ballpark beer. But Judge Thomas Nocella said he based his finding on a simple fact provided by the medical examiner: the victims had no defensive wounds to his hands.

“There was no damage to his hands,” Nocella said. “All the blows were directed at him.”

Indeed, the medical examiner testified that Sale -- attending the game for a friend’s bachelor party -- received almost two-dozen injuries during the attack in the stadium parking lot. There was deep bruising and cuts to his face, severe brain trauma and lacerations to his spleen, liver and bowels. His left ear was partially torn off and he suffered a tear in his left vertebral neck artery, which caused bleeding in his spinal column.

One witnesses described how Sale lay bloodied and dazed on the ground when, despite the pleas of bystanders to “leave him alone,” one of the defendants took a running start and delivered a kick to his head.

“It was a very brutal kick,” said the witness, “as if he was a football player attempting to punt my friend’s face.”

Sale then slumped to the ground and lost consciousness, said the witness.

In his closing argument, Assistant DA Richard Sax described the attack as the “vicious, nasty, cowardly…beating of a defenseless human being.”

The three defendants – Jimmy Groves, 45, Charlie Bowers, 35, and Frankie Kirchner, 28, all attending the game with the now-fateful Moe’s Tavern bus trip -- seemed, at varying times, bored, amused and angered. Groves rubbed his eyes as if was sleepy. Bowers picked his nose. Kirchner, who allegedly delivered the final kick to Sale, shook his head indignantly.

But, when Judge Nocella took the stand to issue his ruling, the three defendants suddenly turned contrite. They held each others hands and bowed their heads.

“Stand them up,” said the judge. “I’ll do them one by one.”

Addressing them individually, he informed them they would be held for trial in the murder of David Sale.

The court case will continue next month.

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