Re-trial of three suspects in fatal shooting begins

Mynisha's sister talks
Re-trial of three suspects in fatal shooting begins
Mike Cruz, Staff Writer
Article Launched: 05/05/2008 10:27:17 PM PDT

SAN BERNARDINO - Almost two years have passed since Mynisha Crenshaw's older sister first told a jury what happened the night 11-year-old Mynisha was shot dead in their San Bernardino apartment.

But Jaynita McWilliams took the witness stand again Monday, in day one of a re-trial for three men charged in Mynisha's killing, and gave emotional testimony about the night her sister was killed and she was wounded.

The girls had come inside for the evening on Nov. 13, 2005, and were having dinner when gunshots ripped into their new home in the Cedarwood Apartments, on Citrus Street a block south of Lynwood Avenue.

Jaynita, who was 14 at the time, didn't see or hear anything unusual just before, she said between sobs.

"Gunshots started to come from the kitchen window," she said. Her mother and stepfather yelled for everyone to get down on the floor.

When the girls' mother, Roshatta Joseph, gave an all clear, Jaynita said she noticed blood coming from a hole in her arm.

"I went to get up and my hand wouldn't move," Jaynita said. "I couldn't feel anything."

Mynisha was struck once in the chest and died. She would have turned 14 last Thursday.

The shooters were part of a group of about a dozen gang members who descended on the Lynwood-area apartments in search of members of a rival gang, said Deputy District Attorney Ron Webster.

Two of the defendants - Sinque Morrison and Harold Phillips - and one of the
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gang's founding members, Sidikiba Greenwood, face charges of murder, attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder and shooting at an inhabited dwelling, according to court records.

If convicted, they could face life in state prison.

Defense lawyers revealed individual strategies, but all three attacked the statements of three defendants who could testify. They took plea bargains with little jail time rather than risk a trial.

"That's what it came down to: Let's make a deal," defense lawyer Clifton Peters said in his opening statement. The three defendants-turned-witnesses had an ax to grind and wanted to save themselves, he said.

"They made deals with Mr. Webster after they had lied and lied and lied," Peters said.

The re-trial, in San Bernardino Superior Court, is authorities' second time prosecuting the case. Jurors deadlocked on most of the charges against the defendants - and a fourth man Michael Barnett Jr. - in fall 2006 at West Valley Superior Court, in Rancho Cucamonga.

Barnett is not part of the re-trial because his lawyer was ill when proceedings for the re-trial were getting under way.

In his opening statement Monday, Webster gave the seven-man, five-woman jury a complex background on the Pimps, Players, Hustlers and Gangsters street gang, complete with photos of gang gatherings, tattoos, hand signs and hierarchies showing who is in control.

Webster said the gang hatched plans for the shooting at a car wash to raise money for the funeral of PPHG member Barry Jones, who was shot dead during a drug buy four days earlier.

Many PPHG members met at Greenwood's apartment, where they got weapons and then went on the hunt for members of the gang they believed was responsible for Jones' death, police said.

"It's time. It's time. You guys need to go, and go mount up, and go to Lynwood," Webster said Greenwood told the gang.

At the Cedarwoods, PPHG member Shawn Davis reportedly fired a gunshot at a man, whom he learned later was his cousin Lucky Kelley. Fearing a police response, the group started to leave when they were directed to the next building, in Apartment 22, authorities say.

Webster told the jurors that Morrison led the attack, believing it was the home of rivals.

"He said, `They're in there, kill them,"' Webster said.

Defense lawyer John Aquilina told jurors his client, Phillips, was forced to go to the shooting and never fired a gun. Morrison's lawyer, Ron Powell, said his client was only placed at the shooting scene by those culpable for the crime.

Greenwood wasn't at the shooting, his lawyer said.

The prosecution's case against Greenwood, Peters said, is built on two issues: things he supposedly said, as told by defendants who took plea bargains, and that he reportedly gave guns to the group.

"You will hear no evidence whatsoever that Sidikiba Greenwood was present at the location," Peters said.


How long will they continue to carry this out? I find it terribly redundant on how the city is and this ignorant media/press has taken this. Not only is this an outrage but also a disrespectful insult to all children in this city that have lost their lost lives in this exact fashion. Yet the media wants to feed the masses some bullshit and make it seem like this was something out of the ordinary when children have been falling victim for years and years. Mynesha was just one of many. So why hasn't this magnifying glass been put on each tragedy through the years? Its disgusting to me