Victim fought with suspect in Raleigh home invasions

Shabar Master Marshall, 17, is on trial this week for a number of charges, including kidnapping and burglary, in the Dec. 11 home invasion on Dorety Place in east Raleigh.

Authorities say it was the first in a series of similar crimes in which Marshall, 16 at the time, is charged. The final break-in was Jan. 7 when a man was shot in his spine and his wife sexually assaulted at their home in Raleigh's historic Oakwood neighborhood.

Testifying as the first witness in his trial for the December crime, the victim, Kortney Shearin, said Wednesday that Marshall repeatedly asked her for money, laughed at her, called her names and attacked her before she managed to get away and call 911.

"I saw the silhouette of what I presumed to be a man in the doorway of my bedroom," Shearin told jurors. "He entered the bedroom and pulled out a gun, and then I sat up and put my hands up, and he said, 'Give me your money.'"

Shearin said she was ultimately forced to her kitchen, where she eventually realized that the gun was a toy, and she and Marshall fought before the gun shattered into pieces on the floor.

"I grabbed (the gun) and shoved him," she said. "I just wanted him out of my house."

Four weeks later, police recovered her stolen laptop from a hotel room where Marshall had been staying.

On it, Shearin said, were pictures of Marshall, and she recognized him as the man who broke into her home.

"I said, I think that's the guy,'" Shearin testified.

But defense attorney George Kelly focused on Shearin's identification of Marshall and a different man she identified as a suspect in an earlier line-up in the case.

Marshall faces a dozen other charges in connection with four other burglaries in Raleigh between the Dec. 11 and Jan. 7 crimes.

He was arrested Jan. 7, shortly after police responded to a similar home invasion in which a man and his wife, too, awoke in the middle of the night to find Marshall and his brother in their bedroom on East Lane Street.

The wife was able to get away to call 911 when her husband was shot. He is now paralyzed.

Marshall, and his brother, Jahaad Tariem Allah Marshall, 26, face numerous charges in that case and could go to trial next year.

Prosecutors hope a conviction in the Dec. 11 case could result in tougher sentences when he is tried on the other charges.