Though she begged and pleaded, Dana Pliakas was prevented from leaving the North Braddock apartment where she was beaten and humiliated. Instead, she eventually marched to her death, witnesses testified yesterday.

On trial is Brittany Leigh Williams, 20, of Penn Hills, who witnesses said flew into a jealous rage after Pliakas told her that Williams' boyfriend was heard talking on the telephone with his ex-girlfriend.

The jury of six men and six women could begin deliberations today, when testimony is expected to end.

The nude body of Pliakas, an 11th-grader at Franklin Regional High School, was spotted at the foot of municipal stairs leading from Electric Avenue to U.S. Route 30 when commuters on a Port Authority bus initially mistook her for a mannequin. She had been shot once in the back of the head.

In opening remarks yesterday, Deputy District Attorney Edward J. Borkowski told the jury that Williams later bragged to a friend who had witnessed the beating that she ordered her boyfriend, Rodney Lee Burton, 23, of North Braddock, to kill Pliakas.

"Now I can get him to do whatever I want," Borkowski said, quoting the witness.

Pliakas had gone to Burton's apartment March 22, 2003, with her friend who was celebrating her 17th birthday. The four of them, along with Leonard Penn, 24, had been smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol before the assaults.

After Pliakas was beaten, stripped and reclothed, Williams and Burton took her outside. The couple told Pliakas they would call her a jitney, Penn testified yesterday. Instead, he said, Burton later told him that he had shot the girl.

Burton requested that Penn dispose of Pliakas' clothing, which he said he did in a garbage bin in the Hill District.