Prosecutor Calls Store Killing an ‘Inside Job’ : Courts: Murder trial begins for Sean Darnell Slade, the accused triggerman in the 1992 holdup of Home Depot in San Fernando.

An armored truck guard was “deliberately executed” in 1992 during an $82,000 holdup at a Home Depot store in San Fernando that was an “inside job” planned by several people, who mostly remain at large, a prosecutor said as the murder trial of the alleged triggerman began Tuesday.

“This was a set-up from the start,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Jeff Jonas said at the outset of the capital murder trial of Sean Darnell Slade in San Fernando Superior Court.

“It was an inside job with inside information. It was planned and pulled off with expertise.”

Jonas said the case remains under investigation by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. He told a jury of six men and six women that his evidence would include testimony by expert witnesses to support his contention that as many as half a dozen people assisted Slade in planning what Slade allegedly referred to as a “lick.”

The prosecutor explained that a lick was a street term Slade employed to indicate that Home Depot would be “licked clean, leaving no witnesses.”

Slade, 27, faces the death penalty if convicted of first-degree murder. Jonas alleges that the July 20, 1992, shooting death of 26-year-old Edwin (Eddie) Maldonado, an $8-per-hour armored truck guard who worked to support his parents, was planned as part of the heist.

In his opening statement to the jury, Jonas said Slade had grown up with a Home Depot employee who was leaving the store for the day at the time the robbery occurred. He was accompanied by another employee, who had scheduled a break at that time. And, Jonas said, the store’s security cameras weren’t working that day.

“Eddie Maldonado was a dead man when he got up that morning,” Jonas said, showing jurors grisly photographs of the victim, who was shot three times with a 9-millimeter pistol.

Slade, the prosecutor said, “laid in wait, bolting forward with the 9-millimeter pistol and spreading Mr. Maldonado’s brains across Home Depot.” The guard was first shot in the back of the head--a blow so powerful that it knocked his sunglasses about 10 feet away, the prosecutor said.

Slade then allegedly grabbed the money bag, simultaneously shooting the guard twice more, a witness told police. “Killing a human being to him is like going into McDonald’s and ordering a hamburger,” Jonas said.

Defense attorney Bruce Hill countered that Jonas’ statement relied on hyperbole, citing such terms as gangster and cold-blooded killer who “planned an execution” and blew “the victim’s brains out.”

But, Hill said, there is no reliable evidence linking Slade to the crime.

Hill said he plans to call UCLA psychologist R. Edward Geiselman as an expert witness on eyewitness testimony to explain how witnesses can be mistaken about a suspect’s appearance.

For example, the defense attorney said, some witnesses described the killer as shorter than the 6-foot-tall Slade. Descriptions of how he wore his hair also varied. And, he said, Slade has an alibi.