Arapahoe County – One of three suspects in a witness killing told a cellmate that he and another suspect shot and killed the witness, a detective testified in court Wednesday.
Aurora police Detective Gretchen Fronapfel also said that a juvenile who warned the shooters that the victim was coming told her that Robert Ray paid Sir Mario Owens and Parish Carter 4.5 ounces of cocaine to kill the witness, Javad Marshall-Fields, as he drove down an Aurora street.
His fiancée, Vivian Wolfe, was in the car and also was killed in the June 20, 2005, shooting.
“The (girl) was at the wrong place at the wrong time,” Fronapfel said the juvenile, who was not charged in the case, told her.
The three suspects, who’ve been indicted on numerous charges, including first-degree murder, could face the death penalty if convicted.
Ray and Owens also have been charged in another murder, the July 4, 2004, killing of Gregory Vann at a rap event at Lowry Park. Fields was to be a witness in that case, in which prosecutors believe Owens shot Vann.
During the hearing Wednesday, the prosecution presented two witnesses, and the defense cross-examined them.
Attorney Doug Wilson, who is representing Owens, said that a witness who testified Wednesday about who stored guns that may have been used in the 2005 shooting is a “crackhead,” to which Fronapfel replied “correct.”
Wilson also got the detective to say that another prosecution witness who cut a deal was at the scene of a handful of carjackings in the Denver area.
Under cross-examination by Wilson, Fronapfel acknowledged that the juvenile who said the two suspects were paid in drugs to commit the killings later recanted his statement because he wasn’t getting a deal.
Attorneys for Carter portrayed their client as “a little slow” and said he may not have understood what was being told to him when he was being interviewed by police.
Fronapfel testified that the unnamed juvenile told her that Carter and Owens were parked on a street “for the good part of the day” waiting for Fields to drive by. The juvenile, who was only identified by initials, placed a call to the two suspects, and when Fields and Wolfe drove by, “they began to shoot up the car,” Fronapfel said.
The next day, she said, the three suspects and another man went to Ray’s barber shop and asked a man who worked there to store two rifles and a handgun in his apartment in the alley in the back of the shop.
Staff writer Carlos Illescas can be reached at 303-820-1175 or cillescas@denverpost.com.
