Edward Corliss, 65, is charged with shooting clerk Surendra Dangol in a Dec. 26, 2009 incident at Tedeschi’s on Centre Street in Jamaica Plain. A social worker who went looking for batteries at a Jamaica Plain convenience store the day after Christmas 2009 yesterday described finding the “gurgling” body of the store clerk behind the counter, as a parolee’s murder trial got underway in Suffolk Superior Court.
On the first day of testimony in the murder trial of Edward Corliss, Christopher Jepsen told jurors he walked into Tedeschi’s on Centre Street about 3 p.m. and didn’t see anyone, but heard an alarming noise.
“It sounded a like a gurgle,” Jepsen said. “It was a gasp.”
Behind the counter, he said, he found 39-year-old Surendra Dangol lying on his back, his eyes open but no pulse, a bullet wound to his torso.
Jepsen dialed 911 from the store phone and began CPR until police arrived, their guns drawn.
Corliss, 65, sat expressionless in Suffolk Superior Court as Tedeschi franchisee Tariq Nehmood testified that Dangol was a hardworking employee of his brother’s from Nepal who was gunned down for $746.
At the time of the shooting, Corliss was on parole from prison, where he had a life sentence for killing a Salisbury store clerk in 1971. Corliss was released in 2006.
Corliss is charged with first-degree murder, armed robbery and unlawful possession of a firearm in Dangol’s death. -— marie.szaniszlo@bostonherald.com Poster child for Capital Punishment