LOCKPORT — After three and a half days of testimony and closing arguments on Wednesday afternoon, a Niagara County Court jury of seven men and five women have begun deliberations in the murder trial of Matthew Glass.
Glass, 24, from Atlanta, faces charges of second-degree murder, two counts of second-degree criminal possession of a weapon, and third-degree tampering with a witness as a result of his indictment by a Niagara County grand jury in connection with the shooting death of Robert Miller, 47, of the Falls, as he sat in his truck on Pine Avenue in October 2023.
He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Glass sat staring straight ahead in the courtroom of Judge John Ottaviano as he listened on Wednesday to the summations of prosecutors and his defense attorney. He had previously declined to testify on his own behalf in the case.
Assistant Public Defender Alexander Basinski stuck to the message he had given to jurors at the start of the trial, “We told you there were going to be missing pieces of evidence.”
Basinski stressed that there was no DNA from Glass on the gun prosecutors presented to jurors as the murder weapon. But First Assistant District Attorney Doreen Hoffmann countered that Glass’ DNA was present on the bullets inside the gun.
“He may have remembered to wipe his DNA off the gun, but he forgot about the bullets,” Hoffmann said.
The veteran prosecutor called Miller, “an innocent by-stander,” who had pulled his truck to the curb on Pine Avenue on the night of Oct. 2, 2023 and then encountered Glass, walking down the street.
“(Glass) had an exchange of words (with Miller) and pulled out a gun and killed him,” Hoffmann said. “Senseless.”
The assistant DA replayed video, introduced as evidence, from security cameras at nearby businesses, that showed Glass walking toward and then stopping by Miller’s pick-up.
“It’s clearly him,” Hoffmann said. “Walking up and down Pine Avenue. There’s no one else walking near that truck. He’s the only person that could have shot Mr. Miller.”
When Glass was arrested by Falls police, they found him in possession of a handgun similar to the alleged murder weapon. Hoffmann reminded jurors that his girlfriend testified that Glass told her that officers “got the wrong gun.”
“He was right,” Hoffmann said. “How did he know that? Only the killer would know that.”
Hoffmann said witness testimony suggested Glass shot Miller because the victim may have called him a (LGBTQ slur).
“I think (Glass) felt disrespected,” Hoffmann said. “And so he decided to shoot (Miller).”
Falls Police patrol officers said they found Miller in the front seat of his truck just before 11 p.m., on Oct. 2, 2023, near the corner of Pine Avenue and 17th Street. Police had been called to the area for a request to “check on the welfare of a man in a pickup truck.”
A caller to 911 told dispatchers that the man in the truck “hadn’t moved for over an hour.”
Officers said when they arrived, they found Miller in the driver’s seat of the truck, “unresponsive.” As Falls firefighters and EMTs worked to administer first aid, they discovered that Miller had been shot in his right side.
He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Earlier in the evening, about 45 minutes before Miller’s body was discovered, patrol officers had investigated a 911 call from a person described as “a woman from Canada”, who was “unfamiliar” with the area she was driving in. The woman told police dispatchers that she saw a male wearing a black hoodie shooting at a parked vehicle, on Pine Avenue “between McDonald’s and Hyde Park Boulevard.”
The woman told dispatchers that she kept driving after potentially witnessing Miller’s murder because she was afraid. Patrol officers responded to the area then, but said they found nothing suspicious at that time.