Suspects in LA Live assassination ordered to stand trial

LOS ANGELES (CN) — Two men charged in the assassination of a man who was shot in the back of his head as he was eating dinner at the counter of a busy restaurant at the LA Live entertainment complex in downtown Los Angeles will have to stand trial.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge David Herriford ruled at the conclusion of a preliminary hearing Thursday that prosecutors had presented sufficient evidence for the case to go to the trial.

Phillip Clark, 35, and Santana Kelly, 51, are accused of planning and carrying out the murder of 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.

Deputy District Attorney Jonathan Chung acknowledged at the hearing Thursday that prosecutors are still in the dark about the motive for Morris’ murder.

Zino Osehobo, Clark’s attorney, unsuccessfully asked for the charges against his client to be dismissed because, he said, the evidence was merely speculative and the police’s identification of his client as the purported shooter at the restaurant lacked foundation.

“It’s less than circumstantial,” Osehobo told the judge.

Deion Benjamin, Kelly’s lawyer, argued that at best the prosecution had provided evidence of his client’s involvement after Morris’s murder in relation to the burning of the car used by the murderers the following day.

Benjamin also pointed out that Kelly, who doesn’t appear overweight, could hardly be the “fat man” who Clark said in a phone call from jail gave him the clothes that prosecutors maintain he’s wearing the day of the murder.

Chung, however, countered that the evidence against Kelly includes a video he took on his mobile phone in which he was scoping out Morris’s residence about a month before the murder.

The preliminary hearing shed little light on what connection the two suspects, reported gang members, had with Morris. The evidence focused largely on video footage from the numerous security cameras at the LA 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 Los Angeles.

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 LA 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 have claimed, 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 his 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.

Both Clark and Kelly have pleaded not guilty to the 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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