Charles Peruto Jr. claims he will have no trouble getting his client, Kyle McLemore, acquitted. The attorney representing the South Philadelphia man charged with the bloody March 1 shooting outside the Palestra that left a man dead and three others wounded called his client an "innocent man" yesterday, vowing to have his client, Kyle McLemore, acquitted of all charges. McLemore, 21, of the 1300 block of South 29th Street in the city's Grays Ferry section, surrendered to police Monday night at the Center City office of attorney Charles Peruto Jr. The arrest came two days after Philadelphia Police obtained a warrant to arrest McLemore in connection with the gunfight that followed the Philadelphia Public League high school boys basketball championship at the Palestra. "I told [McLemore] it wasn't going to be a problem getting him acquitted," Peruto said yesterday. "If I weren't so confident in the outcome I wouldn't have surrendered him." According to Peruto, detectives from the Philadelphia Police Department's Homicide unit had wrongly targeted McLemore in their search because he had a "gripe" with Anthony Davis, the 22-year-old North Philadelphia man who was the sole fatality in the shooting. For years, Peruto and his father, Charles Peruto Sr., have represented a legion of Philadelphia's highest-profile defendants. One of Peruto Jr.'s latest acquittals was William Franz, 30, one of the nine white alleged attackers in a widely publicized February 1997 assault on a black family living in Grays Ferry. Franz was one of three defendants acquitted in the incident. Three others were convicted of felony charges, and three were convicted on misdemeanors. If McLemore is found not guilty, it won't be the first time Peruto Jr., 38, helped to acquit McLemore of homicide charges. When McLemore killed a man in October 1994, Peruto convinced the jury that McLemore was acting in self-defense because the victim, Ronald Phillips, was trying to rob him. In the incident on Penn's campus earlier this month, McLemore allegedly fired several shots from a semiautomatic weapon after Davis fired a shot at him. McLemore also allegedly wounded Latisha Feribee, 20, and Jeffrey Noble, 19, of North Philadelphia. College senior John La Bombard was hit by a stray bullet while working on an architecture project in the Blauhaus on 33rd Street. Peruto added that because of the chaotic throngs of people on 33rd Street during the shooting, witnesses "were not in a position to make an identification," and those who pointed to McLemore as the assailant "are not impartial." Peruto cited the "tremendous pressure" homicide detectives were under to solve the case and McLemore's criminal record as factors contributing to the accusations against him. "I firmly believe in [McLemore's] innocence," Peruto said, adding that he had definite suspicions as to who the true assailant is. Peruto added that the Palestra gunfight "was a drug war." At the time of the shooting, McLemore was still on probation for a narcotics conviction last July. Philadelphia homicide unit investigators said that he, like Davis, "frequented" an area near 5th and Washington streets in South Philadelphia -- possibly a drug corner. Sources close to the investigation said the feud between McLemore and Davis was rooted in drugs, and that they were allegedly fighting over a girl as part of a "turf war." And while he maintained his client's innocence, Peruto said the man he suspected of shooting Anthony Davis was, like McLemore, a South Philadelphia resident whose feud with Davis was related to drugs. According to Peruto, he is an "acquaintance" of McLemore's with a "propensity for violence." Peruto refused to say whether the "true" assailant was also known to frequent 5th and Washington streets. "I can't answer that. It would be revealing too much," Peruto said. "I would rather get them by surprise." So will Peruto bring the true assailant to justice? "As a defense lawyer, I'm obviously not going to right the wrongs of the world," Peruto said. "I'll do what it takes to get my client acquitted. I can't be beat. I said it with Grays Ferry, I'll say it now."
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