A prosecutor told jurors in a San Francisco courtroom today that evidence overwhelmingly implicates a Richmond man in a 2010 fatal shooting outside a nightclub near Fisherman’s Wharf.
Keandre Davis, 22, is charged with murder with a firearm enhancement for the death of 19-year-old Lawon Hall outside Club Suede at 383 Bay St. on Feb. 7, 2010. Three other people were injured in the shooting.
Assistant District Attorney Diana Garcia said in her closing argument this morning that Davis and another suspect cornered Hall as he was leaving the club and shot at him more than two dozen times.
Garcia took a Smith & Wesson 9mm pistol out of an evidence container and showed it to the jury.
“This defendant fired this gun at close range at Lawon Hall,” she said.
She said the gun was found near where Davis was detained, and his DNA was found on the grip of the weapon. Bullet fragments found in Hall’s body also matched ones shot from the gun, she said.
Garcia said Hall was “just a kid … dead for reasons we don’t even know.”
Although Davis’ attorney, Deputy Public Defender Steve Olmo, said during his opening statement in the trial that the scene outside the club that night was “chaos” and “a war zone,” Garcia said that was not the case.
“This was not a chaotic situation for the people doing it,” she said. “It was a targeted assassination.”
Davis was arrested at the scene after a patrol special officer, Robert Burns, witnessed the shooting and shot him. Patrol special officers are authorized under the city charter to provide supplemental police patrols and are contracted to perform private security for local businesses.
A man suspected of being the second shooter was arrested in the days after Hall’s death but prosecutors declined to file charges against him.
Garcia said, “It was either incredible hubris or incredible stupidity that they did this only 35 feet from a patrol special officer.”
Opening statements in the trial began on April 30 and Burns, the patrol special officer, was the first witness to testify.
Garcia said Burns was “the most important witness in this case” because he had “front-row seats” for the murder.
Garcia was continuing her closing argument late this morning and was to be followed by Olmo.
Davis faces 50 years to life in prison if convicted.
Since the shooting, Club Suede has been ordered permanently closed by a judge.
Dan McMenamin, Bay City News
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