It was the peak of the dinner rush at L.A. Reside, a glittering, neon-drenched advanced of eating places and bars steps from Crypto.com Area.
Round 6 p.m. on Nov. 28, 2023, a white Ford Escape pulled out of rush hour visitors on Figueroa Road, stopping alongside the curb exterior Fixins Soul Kitchen.
A person stepped out of the Ford, sporting a darkish jogging go well with with white trim, white sneakers and a baseball cap with the phrases “No F—Given” on the entrance. A black balaclava coated his face as he entered the restaurant.
L.A. Reside’s safety cameras captured what occurred subsequent: In entrance of about 20 diners and staff, he walked up behind a person consuming alone on the bar, aimed a pistol with two fingers and shot him at the back of the top.
At a courtroom listening to Wednesday, Los Angeles Police Division detectives revealed how they recognized the alleged shooter and a second man accused of coordinating what police referred to as a “very well-orchestrated execution.”
Detectives testified that surveillance footage, license plate readers and an evaluation of cellphone and automotive location knowledge helped clear up the case — however solely partially.
It stays a thriller why the 2 defendants, alleged gang members with prior convictions for violent crimes, would goal Sidney Barrett Morris, who till shortly earlier than his demise held a high-level put up at California State College, Northridge.
Searching for a motive, detectives obtained a search warrant for the sufferer’s CSUN electronic mail account, courtroom data present. Morris’ colleagues instructed detectives he’d been investigating gamers on the varsity’s males’s basketball staff who’d been accused of sexual misconduct and harassment. His co-workers theorized the investigation had one thing to do along with his murder.
The tip went nowhere, the lead detective instructed The Instances.
A evaluate of public data associated to Morris, 43, revealed no apparent indicators of a life in misery. No rancorous divorces or enterprise disputes, restraining orders or current monetary bother — nothing connecting him to the 2 males accused of his homicide.
“I’ve been screaming to the D.A. myself: ‘What’s the motive?’” Theida Salazar, a lawyer representing one of many suspects, mentioned in an interview. “My consumer’s obtained no ties to this man.”
Morris’ killer may have hardly picked a extra conspicuous place to commit homicide.
L.A. Reside is bristling with cameras. Armed with a transparent shot of the getaway automotive’s license plate, authorities discovered the Ford Escape two days later, set ablaze on the facet of a street in Palmdale. The Hertz rental had burned right down to its body, precluding the gathering of DNA proof, Det. Joshua Byers of the LAPD’s Theft Murder Division testified on the listening to Wednesday.
Police license plate readers confirmed the Ford was in South Los Angeles the morning that Morris was killed, Byers wrote in a search warrant affidavit reviewed by The Instances. Detectives obtained footage from that morning, which confirmed a lady park the Ford exterior a constructing on 2nd Avenue earlier than getting into one of many items.
The unit was rented by a person named Santana Jermaine Kelly, Byers wrote.
Kelly, then 49, had been launched from jail in 2019. In line with a 2001 probation report reviewed by The Instances, the Baldwin Village native was a longtime member of the Rollin’ 40s gang nicknamed “Ice Man.”
Santana Kelly, proven in a 2018 {photograph}, is charged with orchestrating the homicide of Sidney Barrett Morris.
(California Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation)
First arrested at 16 for carjacking a lady, Kelly went out and in of the California Youth Authority and state jail till 2000, when he was charged with following Asian patrons of the Hollywood Park On line casino to their houses and robbing them, the report mentioned.
After serving 19 years of a possible life sentence for fleeing police, Kelly was launched, courtroom data present.
The morning that Morris was killed, Byers wrote, Kelly was seen within the surveillance footage with two distinctive hats. He wore the baseball cap later seen on the shooter, the detective wrote. He was additionally holding a wide-brimmed straw hat that detectives noticed on the footage from L.A. Reside, obscuring the face of the getaway driver.
On the South L.A. constructing, detectives additionally caught a glimpse of the killer’s face, Byers testified. A person entered Kelly’s unit sporting the identical clothes because the shooter. “Masks, jacket, pants, footwear — all the pieces is an identical,” Byers testified.
Phillip Clark, proven right here in 2015, is charged with capturing Sidney Barrett Morris as he ate dinner at Fixins Soul Kitchen on Nov. 28, 2023.
(California Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation)
At L.A. Reside, the killer was cautious to cowl his face. However in South L.A., he pulled down his balaclava, Byers testified. Detectives recognized him as Phillip Pasco Clark, then 33, a convicted robber and burglar.
Arrested on suspicion of Morris’ homicide on March 22, 2024, Clark referred to as a lady from jail. “I ain’t by no means shot no one,” he declared within the recorded name, which was performed in courtroom. Nor, he mentioned, had he ever been to L.A. Reside.
Clark mentioned he instructed the detectives that, as a member of the Carver Park Compton Crips, he didn’t get together with the “40s,” a reference to Kelly’s gang.
The girl, livid, instructed Clark he shouldn’t have mentioned something. “Cease speaking!” she yelled.
“I don’t shoot folks,” Clark mentioned. “I’m a robber. I like you.”
Detectives arrested Kelly the identical day at his Palmdale house, about 10 miles from the place the getaway automotive was torched, Det. Martin Mojarro testified. Inside his black Dodge Durango detectives discovered the baseball cap from the video, Byers mentioned.
Looking out by way of Kelly’s cellphone, Mojarro testified, he discovered two movies time-stamped a month earlier than Morris was killed. The detective acknowledged the place they have been filmed: an alley behind the Westchester condominium advanced the place Morris lived.
“That is the place,” Kelly mentioned as he drove across the constructing, based on Mojarro. “Hmmm. It’s sort of safe. There’s purple cameras. So he’s tight-knit. As you’ll be able to see, there’s cameras in every single place.”
The second video confirmed a parking storage beneath Morris’ constructing. “I feel it’d be higher to get him on the different location,” Kelly mentioned, based on Mojarro.
Kelly and Clark have each maintained their innocence. The getaway driver, whose face was coated by the straw hat, stays unidentified, based on Byers’ affidavit.
Though detectives made arrests inside 4 months of Morris’ demise, they have been nonetheless no nearer to figuring out the motive.
Morris went by way of monetary issues prior to now. He declared chapter in 2013, stating in a petition that his $76,000-a-year wage as human sources administrator on the College of San Diego couldn’t cowl the $224,000 he owed in scholar debt, unpaid taxes and private loans.
However Morris’ fortunes had seemingly improved by 2019, when he was employed as CSUN’s director of fairness and compliance with a $150,000 wage, based on faculty data reviewed by The Instances. By 2023, his annual pay had risen to $185,000. He had additionally opened a restaurant, B-You, about three blocks from L.A. Reside.
A few of Morris’ colleagues at CSUN theorized his demise was linked to his work. Performing on their ideas, Byers in April 2024 wrote a search warrant for his CSUN electronic mail account.
Earlier than his demise, Morris was investigating the CSUN males’s basketball staff, Byers wrote in a search warrant affidavit. In line with college data reviewed by The Instances, a feminine scholar accused a basketball participant of sexual assault and two different gamers of retaliation after she reported it in July 2023.
Morris additionally ran a consulting enterprise to offer Title IX compliance coaching. When he employed his personal agency to advise the varsity at a price of $12,000, it led some CSUN officers to accuse him of self-dealing, Byers wrote within the affidavit.
Morris resigned three weeks earlier than his demise.
Byers wished to learn Morris’ emails. The notes might “present perception into the investigations carried out by the sufferer,” he wrote in his affidavit, in addition to reveal “any issues, threats or fears the sufferer might have had.”
However after reviewing the emails, Byers instructed The Instances, he didn’t discover proof to attach Morris’ demise to his work on the college.
Deputy Dist. Atty. Jonathan Chung, who’s prosecuting Kelly and Clark, mentioned he nonetheless doesn’t know the motive for Morris’ murder.
Carmen Ramos Chandler, a spokeswoman for CSUN, mentioned college officers have “no purpose to imagine that his demise is said to his work.”
The college will proceed to cooperate with the LAPD, she mentioned, “to convey the perpetrators to justice.”
The preliminary listening to for Clark and Kelly will proceed Could 22.
