SAN DIEGO -- A prosecutor urged jurors Thursday to return a murder conviction against a man accused of shooting a woman during a robbery near her City Heights apartment, but his attorney said no physical evidence links his client to the 1994 killing.

In his opening statement in the retrial of Khary Watson, Deputy District Attorney Clay Biddle said both Watson and co-defendant Tyrone Katrel Lynch made incriminating statements after their arrests last year, linking them to the Oct. 1, 1994, robbery and killing of 54-year-old Patricia Lopez.

Watson's first trial began in late September but ended a few days later when his attorney, Thomas Ochs, became too sick to come to court.

Biddle said Watson told Lynch shortly after their arrests that he shot Lopez "because she bit me."

In a holding cell, Lynch told Watson, "Not everybody should have to go down for this," to which the defendant responded, "It's already too late," according to Biddle.

Later, an agitated Lynch asked Watson, "Why couldn't you just shoot her in the leg or something?" Biddle told the jury.

The prosecutor said Lopez -- a mother of four -- was gunned down as she and friend Barbara Nickerson returned to the victim's apartment about 10 p.m. after a walk to a nearby liquor store for cigarettes.

Biddle said Watson came up behind Nickerson and stuck a gun in her back.

The gunman ordered Nickerson to drop her fanny pack to the ground, and when she did, Lopez took off running toward her apartment on 55th Street, Biddle said.

Watson, who was 17 at the time, caught Lopez on a nearby lawn and shot her once in the back, perforating her heart, the prosecutor alleged.

Nickerson had 20 cents in her fanny pack and Lopez had 76 cents on her, Biddle said.

Following the shooting, Watson and Lynch fled to a waiting car driven by a woman named Komoa Greene, the prosecutor said.

The killing went unsolved until November 2006, when a man called police and told them about a woman involved in the killing of an Hispanic woman in San Diego 12 years earlier, Biddle said.

A 25-caliber gun was traced to Greene, and she admitted involvement in the robbery that led to Lopez's murder, Biddle said.

Lynch and Greene subsequently pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and Greene is expected to testify against Watson.

Ochs told the jury the murder weapon was never recovered and there was no physical evidence linking his client to the murder.

In his opening statement, Ochs said Watson was outside the circle of individuals who committed robberies and a homicide that night.

The attorney said witnesses who initially identified Watson as the person who robbed them weren't sure of their identification.

Watson faces life in prison without parole if convicted of murder and a special circumstance allegation of murder during a robbery. His retrial could last up to a month in the courtroom of Judge Kerry Wells.