Fourth suspect arrested in Woodford Street fatal shooting

Jun. 18—A fourth suspect has been arrested in the fatal shooting on Woodford Street in April, Portland police said Saturday.

Jonathan Scott Geisinger, 44, was arrested in South Portland on Friday night on a charge of felony murder in the April 26 shooting of Derald "Darry" Coffin.

Geisinger is being held on $500,000 cash bail in Cumberland County Jail, police said.

Special reaction teams from Portland and South Portland worked together Friday afternoon around 5:30 p.m. to secure the outside of Geisinger's home on Briarwood Road in South Portland while a search warrant was obtained to enter the house and arrest him, Portland police said.

The search was executed just after 7:30 p.m. and he was arrested about an hour later.

Earlier this month, police made three other arrests in the shooting.

Damion Butterfield, 23, of Saco, was charged with murder in the death of Coffin, 43, of Bath, and attempted murder of Annabelle Hartnett, 27, who was wounded but survived.

Thomas M. MacDonald, 44, of Westbrook, and Anthony L. Osborne, 45, of Standish, like Geisinger, each face one count of felony murder and are being held on $500,000 cash bail.

When the new charges against him were announced this month, Butterfield was already incarcerated at York County Jail, where he has been since the day after the shooting, on unrelated charges, which include a probation violation.

Hartnett, a witness and victim in the April 26 shooting, told the Portland Press Herald that she believes Osborne was responsible for orchestrating an attempted shakedown and the shooting. She said other than Osborne, there were three people who attacked Coffin, which means Geisinger's arrest could be the final one in the case.Felony murder is a law used to hold people responsible for a homicide that occurred in the course of the commission of another crime, including robbery, even if the defendant did not directly cause the death or pull the trigger.

In an interview last month, Hartnett gave the Press Herald an account of what happened when she and Coffin met up with a man known to her only as "Bear" after midnight on April 26. As she and Coffin drove toward Woodford Street with Bear in the car, she said, Bear begged Hartnett and Coffin to give him 5 grams of heroin to resell from an apartment on Cumberland Avenue.

She and Coffin, she said, told him they had nothing to give him and were struggling themselves. Bear then asked where they were headed — and when Hartnett told him, he made a phone call and gave someone the address.

A few moments later, as Coffin, Hartnett and Bear sat smoking cigarettes in Hartnett's SUV outside the apartment building on Woodford Street where Hartnett and Coffin were staying, three men approached the SUV from behind, pulled Coffin out and beat him. Then one of them shot Coffin twice, Hartnett said. She said Bear, who got out of the SUV and watched the assault, didn't appear surprised.

The gunman then aimed his gun at Hartnett's head, but the bullet missed her by inches, passing through the brim of her baseball cap and the scarf around her neck. A second round ripped through her upper arm, wounding her. After Coffin and Hartnett were shot and the gunman fled toward Back Cove, Bear asked Hartnett again to give him drugs before the police arrived.

""He kept saying, 'Give me anything you guys got, because the cops are gonna be here. If you guys have anything on you, give it to me now,'" Hartnett said in an interview after the shooting. "And I was like, 'Get away.'"

During the interview last month, Hartnett said she'd learned Bear's real name was Anthony Osborne.

Staff writers Matt Byrne and Tim Cebula contributed to this report.