Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Richmond, CA: Richmond police investigate two weekend killings

By Karl Fischer
Contra Costa Times
Posted: 11/15/2010 03:04:36 PM PST
Updated: 11/15/2010 05:33:21 PM PST

One homeless man killed another Monday morning in Richmond, apparently angry after watching the victim beat up his girlfriend, police said.
Emergency calls about a body brought officers to a camp in a field in the 2700 block of Regatta Boulevard, about two blocks from the police department, about 1 a.m.
Police did not identify the victim, a 41-year-old man, because they had not yet notified his family. Nor did they reveal the cause of death -- the Contra Costa Coroner's Office plans an autopsy today.
Police arrested Kevin Horton, 44, a homeless man who lived in the same field, on suspicion of murder. Horton was booked into County Jail in Martinez.
Witnesses differed a bit on the details, Lt. Mike Gormley said, but generally agree that the victim and his girlfriend stayed in a camp on one side of the field, and Horton stayed in another on the other side of the field.
Sunday night, the victim got in a loud argument with the girlfriend and physically abused her, Gormley said. Police believe that Horton attacked the victim over that violence.
The homeless man became the second killing victim of the weekend in Richmond, following a Friday night shooting inside a packed party on 23rd Street that had 200 or so attendees.
Gormley said it happened near the bar in the southeastern corner of the Veterans Memorial Hall, which served as a polling station for the surrounding neighborhood Nov. 2.
"Most of the people we talked
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to claimed they didn't see anything, didn't hear shots," Gormley added. "Someone did move the body, though."
One partygoer attempted CPR on 34-year-old Luis Medearis, and bloody drag marks on the floor showed that someone tried to move him from the shooting scene to near a doorway.
The hall can be rented for parties and other special occasions. It hosted a private party Friday, police said, with music, dancing and alcoholic drinks.
Detectives do not know if Medearis crashed the party or was invited. They did find evidence that he spent a fair amount of time there before the shooting, and investigators hope to speak with anyone who spoke with him.
Nobody reported a fight. The few at the party who admitted to seeing anything reported only a generic description of a gunman who ran away afterward.
Medearis, long known to police as a central Richmond gang suspect, made headlines in 1997 when an FBI task force arrested him on suspicion of murder for a shooting death that year at Sixth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue.
He and two other suspects were released, however, when eyewitnesses refused to testify.

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