The jury of four men and eight women began deliberating yesterday and resumed at 9:30 a.m. today in the case of the July 27 shooting that set off a nationwide manhunt, with the pictures of both suspects being broadcast on network TV.

In closing arguments yesterday, a prosecutor said it didn’t matter whether Shelton fired the weapon: He can still be found guilty of murder and assault with intent to kill.

“The defendant need not have pulled the trigger to be responsible for the death of Jessica Imran,” Assistant Attorney General Stacey P. Veroni told the jury yesterday. “The defendant need not have pulled the trigger to be responsible for the shooting of Julie Lang.”

Shelton can be found guilty of murder and assault with intent to kill, Veroni said, if the jury finds that he aided and abetted Barry Offley, or, as she contends, put him up to the shooting.

“Barry Offley, the tool, the nephew of this defendant, acted as his extension, armed with his motive” when Lang was wounded and Imran was murdered, Veroni declared.

Shelton, 29, and Offley, 20, are being tried separately, even though prosecutors allege the two men acted in concert, driving to Imran’s apartment at 88 Lawn Ave., Pawtucket, in the early hours of the morning and shooting the two women to stop Lang from implicating Shelton in a drug case that arose when her car was stopped by Woonsocket police and she was found in possession of cocaine.

Veroni’s argument that Shelton can be found guilty even if jurors conclude that Offley did the shooting was intended to counter defense claims that it was Offley, rather than Shelton, who committed the crime.

Veroni reminded jurors of testimony that Shelton armed Offley with a 9mm handgun and that he stood by and watched while his nephew used the weapon to murder Imran and shoot at Lang.

She also reminded jurors of testimony that Shelton snatched the gun away from Offley, pumping four bullets into Lang, when it misfired.

The reminders came after Shelton’s defense lawyer, John E. MacDonald, tried to shift the blame onto Offley.

“Alonzo Shelton is here because Barry Offley discharged a firearm,” MacDonald said in his closing statement. “Alonzo Shelton is here because of some speculation he had a motive to kill Julie Lang.”

Despite being shot in the head, neck, shoulder and chest, Lang lived to testify.

Lang said on the witness stand last week that Shelton and Offley forced their way into Imran’s apartment and opened fire with what appeared to be a small submachine gun, killing Imran and leaving Lang for dead.

The trial opened last week with the frantic 911 call that Lang, gasping for breath, made seconds after she was shot.

Patrolman Wallace H. Martin, the first police officer to speak to Lang, testified that Lang identified Shelton as the person who shot her when she was interviewed at the scene.

But information that Lang later gave detectives at Rhode Island Hospital diverged from that statement.

In an interview she gave Detective Raymond Johnston in the emergency room, where medical workers were trying to stabilize her, Lang alternately blamed Shelton and Offley for shooting her.

The next day, when Detective William Magill asked who shot her, Lang, heavily drugged on morphine, said she didn’t know.

In his closing argument, MacDonald hammered away at those inconsistencies, arguing that the first time Lang gave an account of the shooting consistent with the physical evidence was on Oct. 1, after she had ample opportunity to familiarize herself with the facts of the case.

Veroni countered there was no evidence that Lang had been coached.

“You heard her testify,” she told jurors. “You heard her tell you that no one told her what evidence was located at 88 Lawn Ave.”

“Julie Lang provided in detail what happened, and it is absolutely corroborated by the evidence -- the evidence that was neither provided nor scripted for her,” Veroni said.