One of five men charged with the murders of three people at a Halloween-themed birthday party testified Tuesday that he was solely responsible for the shooting, telling jurors that he fired from three guns.
Ryan Sim told the Long Beach jury that he and other fellow gang members were headed to go bar-hopping in Orange County in three separate vehicles when he asked to be let out of the Toyota 4Runner being driven by co-defendant Jeremy Penh after noticing an alley where he had been jumped and “knocked out” five years earlier.
Sim, 22, is charged along with Penh, 29, Kaylin Thik, 24, David Heng Long, 23, and Grant Johnson, 39, with murder in connection with the deaths of Melvin Williams II, 35, of Gardena, Maurice Poe Jr., 25, of Long Beach, and Ricardo Torres, 28, of Inglewood, who died at the scene of the Oct. 29, 2019, shooting in the Rose Park area of Long Beach.
The murder charges include the special circumstance allegations of multiple murders and gang-related murders. The defendants could face life prison sentences without the possibility of parole if they are convicted as charged.
The five defendants are also charged with nine counts of attempted murder involving nine people who were injured, including a young woman who was celebrating her birthday with co-workers from Hollywood Park Casino and another woman who was left paralyzed.
Sim — who told jurors that he was about 12 when he became a gang member — testified that he thought “maybe I would run into whoever jumped me in that alley” five years earlier, and said that he asked Thik to “have my back.”
Sim said he was armed with a 9 mm gun and a .40-caliber gun, heard sounds from a party and jumped up onto a wall, and thought some of the partygoers may have been from a rival gang.
Sim said he already had his 9 mm gun out and began shooting as three men approached him and he heard one of them say a word he considered to be associated with the rival gang, but acknowledged during cross-examination that it was a term that others might use.
“Were people screaming?” Deputy District Attorney Michele Hanisee asked Sim.
He responded affirmatively, saying that he saw people running and falling.
He told jurors that he fired from the 9 mm weapon until it ran out of ammunition and that he jumped down from the wall and “snatched” a gun from the hand of Thik, whom he said was sprawled face down on the ground in the alley.
“I seen the gun so I just take it,” Sim said, noting that he then began shooting through circular metal rings at the top of the sliding gate to the back yard where the party was being held and fired from his own .40-caliber gun that eventually jammed and the gun he had taken from Thik.
He said he yelled the gang’s name after the shooting and urged Thik to run faster to get back to a Chrysler PT being driven by Joshua Sam, a former co-defendant who testified during the trial in exchange for what is expected to be a 17-year prison term.
Sim, who is due back on the stand for more questioning Wednesday, said there was “absolutely not” any discussion about going to shoot up a party when the group met up that night in north Long Beach as the prosecution has alleged. He also told jurors that no one is in charge of the gang in that area and that he couldn’t remember the name of the bar or lounge to which the men were headed that night.
His testimony contradicts that of Sam, who was initially charged with the same counts and subsequently agreed to plead no contest to three counts each of voluntary manslaughter and attempted murder in exchange for the lesser prison term. Sam, now 44, testified last week that Penh had told him they would be going to a rival gang’s party to “shut it down.”
Sam testified that he was instructed to wait nearby to pick up the three gunmen, whom the prosecution alleges were Sim, Thik and Long, and that he “absolutely” knew there was going to be a shooting.
In her opening statement last month, the prosecutor told jurors that Penh mistakenly believed rival gang members would be attending the party that night.
“The plan was to kill rival gang members. The only problem was there were no rival gang members there,” Hanisee told the jury.
The prosecutor told jurors that Penh masterminded the attack after hearing from a childhood friend that a man he believed had disrespected “his hood” in a video was hosting the party, with Penh then driving Long, Thik and Sim to the crime scene where the three allegedly opened fire and turned a party of friends and co-workers into a scene of “terror and bloodshed.”
Penh had called his childhood friend to warn him to go inside the home, with everyone else at the party subsequently rounded up to go inside the home, Hanisee said.
Penh called his childhood friend again to ask why he told everyone to go inside, and the friend responded, “There’s nobody here that gang-bangs. It’s just my co-workers,” the prosecutor told jurors.
The party-goers eventually started filtering into the backyard again and within minutes it was “turned into a shooting gallery,” the prosecutor said.
A forensic firearms examiner concluded that three different guns were used based on a microscopic examination of 23 bullet casings that were recovered from the scene, but no guns were recovered, the prosecutor said.
Penh’s attorney, Amy Jacks, acknowledged that her client — the son of Cambodian immigrants — joined a gang because he lived in a neighborhood in Long Beach where gangs were prevalent. But she said he was not at the scene of the shooting and did what he could do to try to diffuse the situation that was building.
“The truth is that Mr. Penh is not guilty,” Jacks told the Long Beach jury.
Defense attorney Daniel Nardoni told jurors in his opening statement that there was no DNA or fingerprint evidence linking Long to the crime and no witnesses identifying him as one of the gunmen.
Nardoni said his client eventually lied to undercover jailhouse informants about being involved with the shooting after being warned about what could happen to him in county jail following more than three hours of conversation in which Long adamantly denied participating in the crime.
Attorneys for the other three men reserved their opening statements.
In testimony last month, Jasmine Johnson said she “knew I was paralyzed immediately” after waiting for the gunfire to stop that night and seeing that the position her feet were in was “completely off.”
Johnson, who was shot in the neck, said she was hospitalized for two months. She said the shooting left her a paraplegic that leaves her without any feeling below her chest, adding that she has a “constant fear of loud noises” that is “haunting” and understands that she has a shortened life span and no prognosis for any ability to walk in the future.
Ingrid Cortes, who was celebrating her birthday that night, testified that she heard what she thought was fireworks before being struck in the chest.
“I was like, `These are not fireworks,”’ she said, noting that she saw everyone running when the gunfire erupted.
When asked if the shooting took her by surprise, she said, “It sure did.”
She testified that she eventually blacked out and awoke to her friends trying to take care of her wounds in the home’s living room, and subsequently spent a month in a hospital.
Other partygoers testified that they were shot as they tried to flee when the gunfire rang out.