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Frustrated grandparents await sentencing of man who killed their grandson

Updated December 5, 2022 - 4:07 pm

Partly cloudy skies loomed over Tony and Jeanie Lato as they made their way up the steps of the Regional Justice Center in downtown Las Vegas to attend the jury trial for the man accused of the cold-blooded murder of Gianni Corsentino, the grandson they raised until his death days after he graduated high school in 2016.

They had endured six years and dozens of frustrating delays in the Eighth District Court, seemingly pointless status checks, canceled trial dates and airline reservations and a defendant, Adrian Johnson, who repeatedly fired his attorneys, refused to show up for some hearings and even walked out of court when he didn’t get his way.

But more disappointment awaited the resilient couple. After entering the courtroom presided by District Judge Carli Kierny that day, with the jury present, Jeanie Lato, upon seeing a photo of Gianni on a TV screen, exclaimed “That’s my grandson!” Bailiffs immediately showed her out. She learned she had been banned from the courtroom to avoid a possible mistrial.

The next day, with Lato, 74, in a courthouse hallway watching the proceedings live on her mobile phone, her 76-year-old husband sat down in the courtroom to view the trial, but not for long.

As Deputy District Attorney Christopher Hamner showed videos and photos from Gianni’s autopsy, including one with the young man’s scalp shaved, revealing a wound from a .45 caliber bullet, Tony Lato, as he put it, “lost control” within the audience.

When Hamner and a police officer escorted him out, he said he “almost collapsed against the door of the courtroom” and in the corridor. He was barred from returning as his wife had been.

“Family members and friends could not attend any more (trial hearings),” Tony Lato observed later. From then on, “we watched the trial from the third floor of the courthouse on our cellphones while the trial took place on the 12th floor … It was really a terrible situation.”

Tony and Jeanie Lato, suffering unbearable grief over their grandson, moved away from Las Vegas to live in Kansas City, Kansas, a year after his death.

Unfortunately, their daughter Michelle Corsentino, Gianni’s mother, took her own life amid her grief two years later, Tony Lato said.

Eighteen years and eight days

Gianni Scott Corsentino, or “G” to his friends, was born June 18, 1998, in North Las Vegas. Michelle Corsentino was white, his father, David Scott Jr., African American. Tony and Jeanie Lato brought Gianni up his entire life in Las Vegas.

While attending Liberty High School in Henderson, Gianni, who was 6 feet, 4 inches tall, overachieved on baseball and basketball teams. Near the end of his senior year, the Community College of Rhode Island awarded him a full scholarship to play baseball there.

For his graduation on June 9, 2016, his grandfather bought him a silver Chevy Cruze four-door sedan with a personalized Nevada license plate, including Gianni’s initials, “GC3.”

Gianni’s 18th birthday was June 18 of that year. But he would live for less than eight more days.

In the early evening of June 25, 2016, the teen pulled out from his grandparents’ home in his Chevy to pick up a few friends for a visit to Silverado Ranch Park, several miles north of the Liberty school campus in southeast Las Vegas.

Among them was his close buddy, 18-year-old Robert Ortiz, who referred to Gianni as “G” and “my brother.” Another was longtime school chum Tai-Ree Williams, 18. Another friend, Gerald Fuller, 18, nicknamed “Gunna,” was the third passenger.

The diverse group simply wanted “to go out, chill and just be friends and have a good night,” Ortiz would tell a grand jury later that year, adding that they also hoped “to get an address to a party.”

Williams provided more details about that night to the grand jury. The youths went to the park “and we met up with these girls and we just (were) blasting music, having fun hanging out, smoking weed like teenagers.”

Afterward, they thought about going to Burger King “to go pick up these girls so we can go to the party, but Gerald said he wants to go to the gas station. So we stopped at the gas station first,” Williams said.

Inside the store

It was a fateful choice. Gianni arrived at the Maverik Adventure’s First Stop gas station on Bermuda Road at Cactus Avenue and parked in a handicapped spot.

Fuller and Ortiz got out and went into the station’s store. Fuller told his friends he wanted a drink but ended up staying inside the store for an extended time, about 45 minutes.

Gianni moved the car to a regular parking spot. Ortiz went to confront Fuller about why he was taking so long. But Fuller was on his cellphone while the others stayed in the car.

Williams testified he stretched out in the backseat and fell asleep. Ortiz, who admitted to drinking cough syrup, or “lean,” to get high, said he checked on Fuller in the store two or three times.

As it turned out, Fuller had called and talked to his mother, then his mother’s brother and his uncle, Adrian Johnson.

Tony Lato, who watched the live stream of the trial, took notes and spoke to others involved in the case, claimed Fuller was experiencing hallucinations, feared that Gianni and the others sought to rob him and may have told that to Johnson.

Det. Barry Jensen, of the Metropolitan Police Department’s homicide section, told the grand jury that Johnson arrived at the station in a white pickup truck but did not say who drove it. Johnson soon met up with Fuller inside the store.

Based on witness statements, someone was waiting in the pickup. The time was moments after midnight, June 26.

Finally, from surveillance video and witness statements, Johnson walked up to the side of Gianni’s car and started shooting a .45 caliber handgun inside, Jensen said.

Ortiz, in the front passenger seat, was hit seven times, four in his arm, twice in the abdomen and once in the thigh. Gianni put the car in gear to back up before he was fatally shot in the head.

Williams, in the back seat, was shot four times. Ortiz put the car back in gear and went to get help inside the store as Williams hid outside.

Jensen stated that Johnson fired at least seven shots, from the casings police found in and outside the car. Gianni was hit in the left side of his forehead only inches away from the muzzle and shot again in the upper left back. Both bullets produced fatal wounds, Jensen said.

Johnson and Fuller ran and got inside the pickup, the detective said.

Guilty verdicts

Some 1,500 people attended Gianni’s funeral on July 2, 2016, prior to his burial at Palm Valley View Memorial Park, Tony Lato said.

The grand jury that October indicted Johnson and Fuller, charging them with conspiracy to commit murder, murder using a deadly weapon and two counts of attempted murder with a deadly weapon.

In the aftermath, Fuller was arrested first. Johnson fled to his native Dallas, where the FBI located him in February 2017, and he was sent back to Las Vegas.

This past April, Fuller, found guilty of two counts of attempted murder with use of a deadly weapon, conspiracy to commit murder and a reduced charge of voluntary manslaughter with a deadly weapon, received a prison sentence of up to 20 years with parole eligibility after eight years. Gianni’s father and grandparents attended the hearing and delivered victim statements.

Johnson, 36, who never admitted guilt, was found guilty by a jury on Nov. 15 of an enhanced charge of first-degree murder with a deadly weapon, murder conspiracy and two counts of attempted murder with a deadly weapon.

Tony Lato, who watched the proceedings, said he timed the jury’s deliberations at only 45 minutes.

Hamner and his co-counsel hugged the grandparents after the verdict, he said.

“The defendant’s lawyers greeted us outside the courtroom and stated that they accepted the decision and congratulated us,” Lato said.

Satisfied that justice had been done for Gianni, Tony and Jeanie Lato splurged on an expensive seafood meal at the Golden Nugget.

Johnson’s sentencing hearing is scheduled for Dec. 27.

But there’s one more potential snag: Johnson’s lawyer filed a motion for a new trial, and a hearing on that is set for Dec. 13.

But Tony Lato remains optimistic and has hopes that Johnson will get a life sentence.

“This guy has been doing all this, he delays all the time,” he said. “I don’t think it’s going to go.”

A previous version of this story misstated the names of Gianni Corsentino’s grandparents.

Contact Jeff Burbank at jburbank@reviewjournal.com. Follow him @JeffBurbank2 on Twitter.

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