Not Guilty Plea Entered in Prom Night Killing
A former high school football player accused in the shooting death of a girl at a post-prom party in Anaheim pleaded not guilty Monday to a murder charge.
Paul Michael Crowder, 19, who is being held on $250,000 bail, has contended that the June 1 shooting of Berlyn Cosman, 17, of La Crescenta was an accident.
A trial date is to be set Friday. Because Crowder was indicted Friday by the Orange County Grand Jury under the state’s Speedy Trial Initiative, there will be no preliminary hearing. Cosman was a popular student and star basketball player at Crescenta Valley High School who received a four-year athletic scholarship to a Missouri college. She was shot while sleeping on a sofa at a hotel room in Anaheim that Cosman and other students had rented. Crowder, a high-school dropout, apparently had been waving a gun in the hours before the shooting, investigators have said.
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