Defense lawyers question how downtown Sacramento shooting began — and who started it

Two years to the day that a gang gunfight left six people dead and 12 wounded in downtown Sacramento, lawyers spent the day Wednesday trying to pin the spark for the melee on one of the people killed that night.

Sergio Harris, a 38-year-old former gang member, father and frequent visitor to the London night club near 10th and K Streets, has been the focus of testimony for two days as lawyers for defendants in the case try to show Harris got into a confrontation with rival gang members and opened fire.

No gun was ever found on Harris after he was shot April 3, 2022, although authorities found gunpowder residue on his hands.

His cousin Ike Harris, who said he was like a brother to Sergio and was with him much of that night, testified that he never saw his cousin with a gun and didn’t believe he had one.

“I never saw him fire a gun,” Ike Harris testified at a preliminary hearing in Sacramento Superior Court, describing how when a crowd of 200 to 300 people began scattering from gunfire he hid behind metal trash cans.

When he felt it was safe to emerge, he said, he rushed to where Sergio Harris had fallen and began CPR until he could not get a pulse, then took his cousin’s cellphone and keys for safekeeping.

But, Ike Harris insisted, he never saw a gun on Sergio.

Then came the video of a police interrogation in July 2022, during which Ike Harris can be seen telling a detective that someone called “5 Star” took a gun after Sergio Harris died, and that he told Ike Harris later he had destroyed it.

The two versions of Ike Harris’ story collided Wednesday as lawyers for brothers Smiley and Dandrae Martin, two of the three men charged with multiple murders in the shootout, began tearing into him.

“It’s not true that 5 Star ever showed up there, is it?” demanded Linda Parisi, attorney for Dandrae Martin. “When you tell police that 5 Star showed up there, it was just a lie, correct?

“That was all just a big lie, correct?”

Ike Harris, who said he and his cousin were former members of the Del Paso Heights Bloods gang before leaving that life years ago, insisted he was telling the truth, saying he got his information “second hand” after the shootout from the internet and elsewhere.

“I don’t remember a lot of the incidents from that night,” said Harris, who had invoked his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination until he was granted immunity Tuesday.

“I don’t remember specifics of that night,” he added.

“You’re telling this lie because you know the cops are really pressing you to tell them where the gun is,” Parisi continued.

“That’s what I believe happened at the moment.”

Parisi’s questioning came after Meghan Cunningham, an attorney for Smiley Martin, launched a similar attack on Harris’ credibility, questioning him about the events of that night and then playing videos of Ike Harris’ police interview that contradicted his claims.

“Let me ask you this, if you see your cousin pull a gun are you ever going to tell us that he pulled a gun,” Cunningham asked.

“I’m not going to lie,” Harris replied.

“Did you see him pull that gun?” she continued.

“No,” he said.

But prosecutor Brad Ng ran more of the video interview Ike Harris did with police, showing a portion where Harris says he got a call a week after the shootout from 5 Star, who told him he had gotten hold of a gun and destroyed it.

Harris told Ng he never saw 5 Star take a gun at the scene and that he had been truthful with police.

Ng also played video in which Harris was describing for police how another group at 10th and K appeared to have drawn their weapons and one man was pointing his arm and a black object toward Sergio Harris from down the sidewalk.

“They got their guns out,” Ike Harris says on the video.

Ng also noted that police did not press Ike Harris in the interview, with Harris testifying the police were respectful and that he answered their questions willingly after being read his rights.

The suggestion from the defense that Sergio Harris had a gun that night raises questions about how the shootout began and who started it.

The Martin brothers and Mtula Payton are the only three living suspects believed to have fired that night, and the preliminary hearing is designed to decide whether there is enough evidence to send them to trial.

Questioning and video evidence produced so far suggests the confrontation began after a man in a black puffed jacket approached Sergio Harris on the sidewalk to tell him there was a group of “Suckas” from the “Loom Squad” gang down the street.

Ike Harris testified under questioning from Ng that he didn’t recall that, and that he had never heard of the Loom Squad at the time.

But after the man in the jacket tapped Sergio Harris on the shoulder and warned him, Harris continued down the street near 10th and K and looked toward a group of men against a wall.

A short time later, the crowd of people who had emerged from the nightclubs after closing began to disperse, Ike Harris said.

“I scattered with them,” he said. “It’s a rule of thumb. When one runs, you all run.”

At first, the crowd thought it was a false alarm and began to come back together, but then scattered again, Harris testified.

Video played in court shows a series of muzzle flashes from behind a tree where Sergio Harris had been standing and police would later say more than 100 rounds had been fired during the shootout that killed innocent bystanders, including a homeless woman sleeping in a doorway.

Under questioning from Reid Kingsbury, Payton’s lawyer, Ike Harris testified that he didn’t know anything about the Martin brothers or Payton until well after the shooting.

He added that he and his cousin were both in their 30s and had moved on from gang life as they focused more on family and work.

“It’s like graduation, the streets are school and, at some point, you graduate or you flunk out,” Harris testified, adding that he and his cousin first became involved with gangs at 12 or 13.

“He never joined it,” Harris said. “We were born into it. Our neighborhood where we were born, we were raised, it was natural for us.

“There was no initiation to say, ‘Today we joined a gang,’” he said.

But Parisi later pressed Harris about whether the mention of “Suckas” — or enemies — from the man in the black jacket put Sergio Harris on alert about rivals in the area.

“It would be fair to say that this nameless person in the black puffer jacket was sort of the fuse that got this whole thing started,” Parisi said to Harris, who insisted that he didn’t know the man or what was said.

Harris eventually conceded to Parisi that he lied about 5 Star taking a gun after Sergio Harris was killed.

“I told that lie so they’d get away from me,” he said. “Nobody wants to be involved with law enforcement, cases court.

“Nobody wants to be inconvenienced.”

The hearing will continue Thursday and Monday, with additional sessions expected in August.