Psychologist: Strip killer Ammar Harris raised amid abject poverty, abuse — VIDEO
Sandra Sutton-Wasmund endured three bouts with breast cancer in 10 years.
Despite her struggle, she "radiated ... compassion and empathy" for others, her husband, James Wasmund, told a jury Tuesday during a penalty hearing for Ammar Harris, who was convicted last week of killing her and two others on Feb. 21, 2013.
"She made everybody a better person," Wasmund said.
Sutton-Wasmund, a mother of three from Washington state, died instantly after a gunshot from Harris triggered the fiery explosion of a cab on the Las Vegas Strip.
Prosecutors said Harris pulled alongside Kenneth Cherry Jr.'s car on the Strip and fired a bullet that plowed through the 27-year-old's vital organs, killing him. The Maserati then slammed into a taxi, causing an explosion that killed driver Michael Boldon, 62, and his passenger, Sandra Sutton-Wasmund, 48. A passenger in Cherry's Maserati suffered a minor gunshot wound.
Earlier in the day, Heidi Cherry testified that she lost "the perfect son," who had three young children of his own.
"I can't sleep," she said. "I don't eat. ... It's been awful. I'm devastated. I'm so devastated."
Carolyn Jean Boldon-Trimble told jurors Monday the killings felt like a bad dream, and she still wishes for her brother to return.
"I'm still in denial that this has even happened," she said.
As he did Monday, Harris, who faces the death penalty, declined to appear at the sentencing hearing.
Shera Bradley, a psychologist hired by defense lawyers tasked with convincing jurors to spare Harris's life, testified that she spent 13 hours talking with Harris about his life.
His biological father died when Harris was 2 years old, and his stepfather was in prison until Harris was 15. He lived in poverty throughout his childhood, moving often throughout New York and New Jersey, where he saw people being killed in the streets.
He told the psychologist he has had suicidal thoughts since he was 6, and much of what he's done in his life had "suicidal undertones." His mother often whipped him with an electrical cord and left him alone to find food for himself and his sister, Bradley testified. Harris described his childhood as "miserable, suffocating."
Harris, now 29, reported being sexually abused by an adult male cousin at age 7, and said he was raped again when he was 11 years old.
On cross-examination, prosecutor David Stanton pointed out that Harris had been suspended and expelled from school as a teenager, and that he had almost no job experience as an adult, alluding to but not directly stating that Harris engaged as a pimp.
The prosecutor also dug into Harris's lengthy criminal history as an adult. In 2004, when he was 18, he was caught with a stolen firearm in South Carolina. He spent 10 months behind bars in that case and incurred eight disciplinary infractions. Nine years later, just after the Strip killings, while in prison in Nevada following an unrelated rape and robbery conviction, Harris bribed a prison guard and obtained cell phones, alcohol and other contraband.
Jurors are expected to hear closing arguments and start deliberating Harris's fate Wednesday afternoon.
Contact David Ferrara at dferrara@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-1039. Find him on Twitter: @randompoker
