Police Identify 3 Shot to Death in Kearny Mesa Hotel

Authorities on Wednesday released the identities of three teen-agers discovered shot to death at a Kearny Mesa hotel this week.

Police are trying to establish a motive for the slayings, which occurred Monday.

The three victims were shot in the head Monday night at the Holiday Inn at 8110 Aero Drive, authorities said. Dead at the scene were Jennifer Louise Lucas, 18, of San Diego, and Moses Blackman Gadson, 19, and Derrick Lamont Robinson, 19, whose residences are unknown.

San Diego Police Lt. John Welter said no motive has been established, nor have any suspects been identified.

“There’s no indication of any illegal activity prior to the murders . . . but nothing has been ruled out,” Welter said.

So far homicide detectives have established that the victims knew one another, and on Wednesday they began investigating the backgrounds of each to determine whether they were killed by someone they knew, Welter said.

“Do we have three separate murder targets, or do we have one person murdered and the others killed because they witnessed it?” Welter said.

Welter declined to comment on the nearly 50 phone calls hotel officials said were made to the room before the shootings.

Lucas, the mother of 19-month-old and 3-month-old sons, was unemployed and was in the process of finding her own apartment, said Gail Fizer, her mother, who lives in San Diego. She said her daughter didn’t have a criminal record.

“I don’t believe for one minute that Jennifer was into something or anything like this,” Fizer said. “She was dead set against drugs, and she was dead set against drinking.”

Fizer speculated that at least some of the calls placed to the hotel room Lucas rented on Saturday might have been tied to her apartment search.

She also said her daughter, who was enrolled at Mesa College, had left home in March and had been staying with her boyfriend, who is the father of her children.

Police said Gadson and Robinson were unemployed. They believe the two lived in San Diego but don’t know where.

Fizer said her daughter had dated Robinson in the past.

With the discovery of the bodies, the city has experienced 11 homicides in four days.