A 19-year-old Homewood man will stand trial for homicide in the shooting outside a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant on Frankstown Avenue in January.

At a preliminary hearing yesterday, Romeo Price was held for court on homicide charges. He was arrested earlier this month after two witnesses fingered him in the Jan. 29 killing of 15-year-old Ernest Tolliver.

Ernest was shot in the neck while he sat in the front passenger seat of his mother's vehicle in the drive-through lane of the KFC.

Mr. Price's attorney, William Difenderfer, tried to cast doubt on the witnesses, who both have criminal records. They could only identify Mr. Price by his eyes, because he allegedly was wearing a skull cap and a mask.

"In 20-some years, this is one of the worst identifications I've seen," Mr. Difenderfer said. "It's well beyond a reasonable doubt."

Mr. Difenderfer said he was confident his client would fare well at trial, considering that the witnesses have made false reports to police officers before and police have not found the murder weapon.

The witnesses told officers they saw a man, later identified by police as Mr. Price, pull a black semiautomatic pistol from the waistband of his pants and fire at least three shots into the front passenger seat of the car, according to an affidavit. The man then jumped over a wall and fled.

Ernest's girlfriend, Ashlee Acrie, 17, said she was sure Mr. Price was the shooter.

Police said after the incident that gang retaliation might have been a factor in Ernest's killing, and that the boy had ties to known gang members. Ernest's presence at an earlier Homewood shooting, they said, might have made him a target.

"I want him to be remembered as the funny, joking, always trying to please me, good person that he was," said Ashlee, who wore a shirt with a photograph of Ernest on it with the message "RIP Bookie."

"Not what the police are trying to say he was."