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LOS ANGELES (CN) — Los Angeles County prosecutors on Wednesday began presenting evidence against two defendants in a shocking, execution-style murder of a man who was shot in the back of the head as he was eating at the counter of a restaurant in the sprawling L.A. Live entertainment complex.
Law enforcement officers and detectives testified at a preliminary hearing in a downtown LA court where a state judge will decide if there’s sufficient evidence for Phillip Clark, 34, and Santana Kelly, 51, to stand trial on charges they murdered Sidney Barrett Morris in the early evening of Nov. 28, 2023.
The 43-year-old Morris, a part-owner of a restaurant in downtown LA area, was studying to become a lawyer at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas at the time of his murder. Previously, he had worked at the Michigan Department of Civil Rights as an equal opportunity employment representative and at the California State University in Northridge as a director of diversity, equity and inclusion.
“His life work was dedicated to fostering inclusivity and harmony within our society, making his untimely demise all the more devastating,” former LA County District Attorney George Gascón said last year in announcing the arrest of the two defendants.
The brazen murder in a busy restaurant at the popular tourist destination in downtown LA shocked the city, particularly because it was anybody’s guess as to why the killers targeted Morris.
The preliminary hearing shed little light on that question. The evidence focused largely on video footage from the numerous security cameras at the L.A. Live complex, which showed a masked gunman, purportedly Clark, getting out of a white Ford Escape that had pulled over at the curb near the Fixins Soul Kitchen where Morris was eating by himself at the counter.
The footage shows the gunman walking up behind Morris and shooting him from close by in the head.
Martin Mojarro, a Los Angeles Police Department detective, identified the gunman as Clark, testifying he wore the exact same tracksuit and Nike Air Jordan basketball shoes that evening as he did earlier in the day outside Kelly’s place of business in South LA.
Security video footage from the South LA location shows a man who Mojarro said was Clark with a black ski mask pulled down from his face. The gunman at L.A. Live had worn a similar ski mask to hide his face.
Another security camera recorded the getaway car the murderers used on the same street in South LA.
The driver of the white Ford Escape, prosecutors claim, was Kelly, who was wearing a large, brown straw hat to hide his face when he pulled up outside the restaurant. The footage from the South LA street where Kelly had unspecified business shows him putting a similar hat in his black Dodge Durango SUV on the morning of Morris’ murder.
The Ford Escape was discovered on fire the next day on a remote road in the city of Palmdale, in northern LA County, where Kelly lived.
Other evidence linking Kelly to the murder included videos prosecutors said he made on his cell phone about a month before the murder in which he drives around the alley behind the apartment complex where Morris lived while talking about how to locate his parking spot.
In addition, LAPD detectives interviewed a woman Morris was dating who told them he had asked her to come to his restaurant about a week before he was killed, because he was worried about a black Dodge Durango that was parked outside his establishment.
The woman identified the vehicle as Kelly’s SUV.
A further piece of evidence discussed at the hearing was the black baseball cap the gunman wore when he shot Morris. The cap had an unusual logo that said “No f*cks given,” and in the footage from outside Kelly’s business, Kelly is seen wearing it as well, prosecutors claim. The cap was found at Kelly’s home after his arrest.
Still, none of the evidence presented so far indicates how the two defendants knew Morris and what their motive was for killing him.
LA County Superior Court Judge David Herriford adjourned the hearing until May 22.
Both Clark and Kelly have pleaded not guilty to charges they murdered and conspired to murder Morris. They have been in custody since their arrest in March of last year, and they face life in prison if convicted.
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