‘Outnumbered’: Las Vegas trial starts for man accused of killing woman over salad

Prosecutors say Rainier Jefferson killed Mallery Armijo over a salad and should be found guilty of first-degree murder.

An attorney for Jefferson says he was outnumbered by drug users armed with knives and a gun, one of whom threatened him and pelted him with racial slurs. There is not enough evidence to convict him, she says.

Soon, a jury will decide; Jefferson’s trial began with opening statements Tuesday.

Now 37, Jefferson was arrested in 2023 after the fatal shooting outside a 7-Eleven near Sahara Avenue and Joe W Brown Drive.

Deputy District Attorney Kayla Farzaneh-Simmons showed jurors surveillance video from the store and narrated the events leading up to the shooting. She said it was just after midnight when Armijo and her friends arrived at the convenience store where Jefferson worked as a clerk.

Armijo put a salad into her bag and Jefferson overheard a conversation between Armijo and one of her friends about whether they had money to pay for items, the prosecutor said.

The defendant ordered Armijo to put down the items in her hand and she obeyed, but Jefferson chased her outside, even though pursuing shoplifters was a violation of 7-Eleven policy, said Farzaneh-Simmons.

In the store’s parking lot, Jefferson tried to grab Armijo’s purse and one of Armijo’s friends briefly displayed a gun, according to the prosecutor. Jefferson recovered the salad and threw it across the parking lot, she said.

Despite the altercation, Armijo reentered the store. As she and her group finally walked away, Jefferson followed them with a gun, the prosecutor said.

Armijo was shot twice in the back and both bullets hit her spinal cord, according to Farzaneh-Simmons. The shooting was not captured on video, but a gun recovered from the 7-Eleven roof had Jefferson’s DNA on it and took bullets of the same caliber as those used in the shooting, she said.

Chief Deputy Special Public Defender Lisa Chamlee-Brainard said the video footage left out a lot.

Jefferson worked the graveyard shift in a high-crime area with transients and drug addicts, the defense attorney said. The man who pulled the gun when Jefferson tried to stop the theft and “escalated the entire situation” is a convicted felon who was not supposed to have firearms, she said.

Testimony will show that he and Armijo had used drugs and were high at the time of the shooting, said Chamlee-Brainard. Armijo was also “heavily armed” with multiple knives and “dealt the initial blow,” according to the attorney.

The man with the gun spat on Jefferson, directed racial slurs at him and threatened him, she said, and Armijo yelled at Jefferson too.

“He was outnumbered,” Chamlee-Brainard said. “He came back out and he fired the shot.”

Contact Noble Brigham at nbrigham@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BrighamNoble on X.