SAN DIEGO : Lawyer Implicated in Murder Plot

On the first day of a preliminary hearing for a La Jolla attorney charged with concocting a plan to kill a former client, prosecutors presented evidence that the lawyer was involved in cocaine, high-powered weapons and the murder-for-hire plot.

Stuart Sandrock, 38, is charged with soliciting a County Jail inmate in November to kill his former client, who was also being held at the Vista jail.

A San Diego police detective testified that, after the deal was arranged, the informant asked Sandrock “if he wanted him knocked out cold or taken out all the way.”

“You know me, I go all the way,” Sandrock replied, according to Detective Joseph Howie.

The alleged target of the plot, Robert Aaron Noe, 34, pleaded guilty while being represented by Sandrock in August to one count of selling methamphetamine. The plea followed the denial of a motion to have the attorney removed from the case.

Noe told investigators that Sandrock wanted $40,000 for legal fees.

“He didn’t think he owed him that much,” Howie testified. “He thought he signed over some assets.”

Howie testified that Sandrock was arrested when a police operative delivered a fully automatic AK-47 to the attorney in a parking garage near his offices.

More than three-quarters of a gram of cocaine, as well as tools designed for the drug’s use, were recovered from his home, the detective said. Two semiautomatic pistols, a modified shotgun and an ammunition bandolier also were seized.