Trial opens for Strip gunman accused of killing three
A shooting on the Strip that left three people dead was the result of mistaken identity, prosecutors said Thursday as a death penalty trial for the gunman opened.
As Ammar Harris pulled alongside a dark Maserati in the pre-dawn hours of Feb. 21, 2013, three women with him said, "you got the wrong guy," prosecutor David Stanton told jurors.
Less than 15 minutes earlier, Harris briefly quarreled with a man outside the former Haze nightclub at Aria. That man later climbed into a two-door Aston Martin, which Stanton called "strikingly similar" to the Maserati being driven by Kenneth "Clutch" Cherry Jr.
Jurors watched surveillance video that followed Harris' black Range Rover and heard a gunshot. Three more rapid cracks and a fiery explosion at the intersection of Flamingo Road and Las Vegas Boulevard filled the large screen in front of the courtroom.
In a 24-hour town packed with tourists during one of the busiest convention weeks of the year, those sounds echoed well beyond the valley, prosecutor David Stanton said.
"People all over the world have a certain impression about what this town is," Stanton said. "Three innocent people here for different reasons... they were murdered in a violent, horrific fashion."
Harris faces murder with use of a deadly weapon, one count of attempted murder with use of a deadly weapon, two counts of discharging a firearm into a vehicle, and five counts of discharging a firearm out of a vehicle.
On the screen in the courtroom, the Range Rover sped away, its right indicator light blinking.
An officer quickly gave chase, but turned back after hearing what he thought were more gunshots.
The secondary explosion occurred as a bullet plowed through Cherry's vital organs and he crashed his car into a taxi, killing driver Michael Boldon and his passenger, Sandra Sutton-Wasmund of Maple Valley, Wash.
Harris arrived back to his residence at the Meridian within minutes, telling friends he wanted to hide at the Spearmint Rhino strip club. Eventually, he fled in a white Cadillac Escalade to Los Angeles, where he was arrested about a week later.
Defense lawyer Thomas Ericsson told the jury that Harris was acting in self defense, calling the event a "tragedy, but not murder."
Harris had been shot two months prior and told someone had wielded a handgun outside Aria just moments before the encounter with Cherry on the Strip.
Ericsson said that later in the trial, expected to last several weeks, a psychiatrist would testify whether Harris had the "mental intent" to commit murder.
Contact reporter David Ferrara at dferrara@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-1039. Find him on Twitter: @randompoker
