Hearing for Sacramento mass shooting suspects focuses on the gunfight’s 114 fired rounds
114 different shell casings, 94 of them fired from 9 mm weapons.
Seven different firearms, including one that had been converted to fire in full-automatic mode.
Six people dead, and 12 more wounded.
Prosecutors continued their methodical reconstruction of the April 2022 mass shooting in downtown Sacramento, focusing on the ballistic evidence and the carnage left behind in the predawn hours of April 3, 2022, after a gunfight broke out in the packed K Street Mall area.
Philip Hess, a criminalist with the Sacramento County District Attorney Office’s crime lab, testified that he examined each of the 114 cartridges collected from the scene, studied bullet fragments recovered from victims’ bodies and test-fired the Glock 9 mm handgun recovered in a doorway amid the wounded and dead from that night.
“It took me months to perform that (analysis),” Hess said during sometimes graphic testimony on the third day of a preliminary hearing Friday before Judge Maryanne Gilliard in Sacramento Superior Court.
Prosecutors Brad Ng and Kristen Andersen are seeking to show there is enough evidence for defendants Smiley Martin, 23; his brother Dandrae, 28; and Mtula Payton, 29, to face trial on murder charges.
The men are being held in the Sacramento County Main Jail and have pleaded not guilty to murder charges in the shooting deaths of Yamile Martinez-Andrade, 21; Johntaya Alexander, 21; and Melinda Davis, 57.
Prosecutors say the three were innocent bystanders cut down in a hail of bullets between two groups of shooters that left three others in the groups — Joshua Hoye-Lucchesi, 32; DeVazia Turner, 29; and Sergio Harris, 38 — dead from gunshot wounds.
Friday’s testimony from Hess and Sacramento police forensic investigator Katelyn Kopf focused on the aftermath as officials combed the area around 10th and K streets looking for evidence and later created computer-generated reconstructions of the violence.
Kopf was the first witness, testifying that in the hours after the 2 a.m. gunfight she was dispatched to take photos of the Martin brothers, who were both hospitalized with gunshot wounds.
Smiley Martin’s public defender, Norm Dawson, displayed some of the photographs Kopf took as evidence on a large screen inside the third-floor courtroom where family members of the victims and alleged shooters were seated in the audience.
“Oh, my God,” one woman moaned from the gallery as Dawson displayed a large wound on Smiley Martin and another that showed him in a hospital bed with a tube in his mouth and another in his left nostril.
Hess followed Kopf on the witness stand, testifying that his analysis determined seven weapons were fired at the scene, six of them 9 mm Lugers and another that fired 5.7 x 28 mm rounds.
Under questioning from Dawson, Hess said he analyzed bullet fragments recovered from two of the victims — Turner and Alexander — and that they could not have come from the fully automatic Glock found at the scene. This was an important point to the defense because that firearm belonged to Smiley Martin.
Hess said there was no definitive evidence that any of the bullets at the scene came from that Glock. He added that he could not eliminate the Glock as the source of the bullets, but noted that the smaller-caliber rounds also could have come from millions of firearms around the country.
Prosecutors have said previously in court filings that evidence showed Smiley Martin fired 28 rounds from a Glock 19 during the shooting and that he “has demonstrated a life-time commitment to violence.”
Court filings also note that an Instagram video posted hours before the shooting showed the Martin brothers and Hoye-Lucchesi posing with two black handguns, one equipped with a high-capacity magazine, and a rifle.
The preliminary hearing is scheduled to resume April 2 and last for three days, with testimony expected from witnesses to the shooting, a gang expert and presentations of videos from the scene.
