UPDATE: Sept. 23, 5:33 p.m.
A juror in the Montgomery County murder-for-hire trial has been dismissed after she told a court official she didn’t understand everything she had heard over the past five days. The jury was sent home after about four hours of jury deliberations Friday and will come back on Monday.
Original story follows
NORRISTOWN, Pa. (KYW Newsradio) — A murder-for-hire trial involving an alleged love triangle is underway in Montgomery County, nearly two years after a woman was shot and killed on a quiet street in Lansdale.
On Nov. 28, 2020, 30-year-old Ebony Pack was found dead with multiple gunshot wounds in the driver’s seat of her car, at the intersection of East Hancock Street and Church Road in Lansdale. The car, riddled with bullet holes, was still running.
Prosecutor Lindsey Mills said Monday that Ebony Pack was "collateral damage" in defendant Chong Ling Dan's revenge scheme. They say Dan orchestrated the murder to get back at his ex-girlfriend, Jasmine Stokes, who owed him $9,000.
After Dan and Stokes broke up, Stokes started dating Pack. Stokes had a protection-from-abuse order against Dan after she told police he confronted her, and threatened her and Pack over the unpaid debt a couple months before the shooting.
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Stokes told police that Pack was traveling to her house on Nov. 28. But when Pack was stopped at a red light at Hancock Street and Church Road in Lansdale, a dark-colored Cadillac pulled up next to her Nissan Sentra, and a passenger fired at least 10 shots into the car, killing her almost instantly.
Surveillance video shows the Cadillac driving away the Nissan drifts into a pole.
Prosecutors say that car belonged to Ricky Vance. They say Vance was the driver and Terrence Marche pulled the trigger. And they say they’ll prove the two were carrying out a plan hatched by Chong Ling Dan.
Vance and Dan, both arrested last year, are on trial for murder and conspiracy. Marche is also charged but has been missing since he went to Honduras in May 2021.
Marche's fiancée told investigators that he told her he was going to meet Dan there. The criminal complaint said Marche's fiancée took a call from Dan saying he would be returning to the U.S. without Marche. His fiancée said Marche hasn’t been heard from since.
Defense attorneys argue the evidence is circumstantial and Dan and Vance were not involved. They say there are a lot of holes in the case that will come out over the course of the trial. For example, Vance’s lawyer, John McMahon, says there is no evidence of any payout to his client.