A friend of a 19-year-old Allegheny County woman killed nearly two years ago in Rostraver Township told a Westmoreland County jury on Thursday she saw the suspected murder weapon in the motel room rented by the man police say fired the fatal shots. Rose Brown testified yesterday on the third day of the first-degree murder trial of Carl Q. Leach, 31, of Rostraver, that she and Terra Groff, the woman whose body was found Dec. 6, 2000, under a guardrail on Orr Road, saw the gun amidst a stash of cocaine and marijuana and a wad of cash. Brown, 21, and Groff, of Verona, Allegheny County, were in Leach's room at the Best Valu Motel in Rostraver several nights before the murder. When Leach left briefly to pay for a pizza, the women saw the gun and drugs. "The gun was in a holster on top of the nightstand," Brown testified. That gun was found about two weeks later by a local trapper on the banks of a small stream in Rostraver. Prosecutors say the gun is a ballistics match to two slugs taken from Groff's body during an autopsy. Prosecutors contend Leach shot and killed Groff in retaliation for her stealing drugs and about $700 in cash from his motel room. Brown's testimony came as prosecutors switched the focus of their circumstantial case against Leach, which on Wednesday detailed the crime scene. Jurors were bused to Orr Road to look at the area where Groff's bullet-riddled body was discovered by a motorist. In court yesterday, Brown said she and Groff were friends, and that a day before her murder Groff admitted to stealing money and drugs from Leach. But under questioning from defense attorney Adam Cogan, Brown told jurors there were at least two and maybe three other men who had opportunity or motive to kill Groff. Brown said Groff was involved with several drug dealers, including one other man besides Leach whom she may have stolen from days before her death. Brown also testified that Groff was apparently in an abusive relationship with another drug dealer, a man she followed to Ohio in October 2000 and lived with there for about a month before they returned to the Rostraver area. "He smacked her around and he was abusive toward her," Brown testified. The defense contends someone other than Leach killed Groff, and at the start of the trial suggested an unidentified man in a white pickup truck fired the shots that killed Groff then dumped her body on Orr Road. Leach claims he was in his hotel room at the time authorities say Groff was killed. The trial will continue this morning before Westmoreland County Judge Richard E. McCormick Jr.

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