Girls Testify They Saw Man Shout, Fire Fatal Shots

Two girls testified that they watched in surprise as a companion pulled out a gun and fired repeatedly at a teenager outside the Fallbrook Mall after yelling something they could not understand.

“You don’t gangbang? Well, you do now,” both girls testified that the man with the gun, 19-year-old Tommy Lee Williams, later told them he said to his alleged victim, who died of multiple gunshot wounds.

The eyewitness testimony came in the murder trial of Williams and Elliott O’Neil Singletary in Van Nuys Superior Court on Tuesday. Both are charged with the fatal shooting of 16-year-old Taft High School student Ramtin Shaolian on June 9, 1995.

The girls, both from Woodland Hills, testified under a grant of immunity from prosecution.

Their testimony fixed the apparent motive for the shooting: Shaolian sharply denied being a gang member when Williams spoke to him shortly before the fatal shooting.

Each girl testified that she had met two girlfriends that June evening. One, the driver of the car, brought along Singletary and Williams.

After buying “a few bottles of beer,” the group went to an apartment complex across the street from the Fallbrook Mall, where a friend of Singletary’s lived. But the friend was not home, so Singletary decided to use a pay phone at the mall to page him.

While Singletary was making the call, the girls testified, they saw a group of about six boys aged about 16 to 17 walk up to the phones.

Singletary asked the boys if they gangbanged, and one swore and said “Do you think we look like gangbangers?” according to the girls’ testimony.

The girls testified that Singletary became “upset and angry” at the attitude of the youth’s response to his question. After talking to Williams for several minutes out of earshot of the girls, Singletary ordered the four girls to get back into the car, then instructed the girl who was driving to troll through the parking lot, eventually directing her to the rear side of the mall.

Both girls said they had no prior knowledge that the shooting was going to take place. They said Singletary, who was in the right front seat of the 1992 Ford Escort that six youths were crammed into, told the girls to duck as the car cruised the mall parking lot.

They did as they were told, not knowing they were in the middle of a gang-style shooting, each testified.

The girl who drove the car is awaiting trial on murder charges, and the last occupant of the vehicle, also a young girl, was not charged.

“I just ducked down, where my face could not be seen as an ordinary passenger,” one girl said. “He [Singletary] didn’t actually tell us why we were ducking.”

“The car came to almost a complete halt. At that point, [Williams] was already leaning out the window, and he started shooting,” one girl testified.

The girls testified that they heard about seven or eight shots.

Williams, the alleged gunman, who went by the name “Ace Capone,” and Singletary, known as “Chocolate,” are also both charged with conspiracy to commit murder and four counts of attempted murder.

In earlier court proceedings, witnesses testified that Shaolian left a movie theater in the mall with half a dozen friends.

Shaolian died from gunshot wounds. A friend suffered gunshot wounds to the leg and torso and was hospitalized for a day.

The two girls testifying Tuesday said that after the shooting, Singletary instructed the girl driving the car to go to an apartment in Van Nuys, where the two men drank beer and Williams washed gun powder off his hands. Both girls said they called a friend for a ride home, and the two other girls went home separately.

After Singletary and Williams were arrested, police said the two were believed to be gang members. But Phil Nameth, Singletary’s defense attorney, denied that his client has any gang ties.

“The police have checked through the gang files. My client has never been on the list. He never identified himself as, or claimed to be, a gang member. He is just a regular person, with family values, who wants to live a regular life,” Nameth said.

Prior to his arrest, Singletary, a Van Nuys resident, worked at a Target store. He has an 18-month-old child and a fiancee, Nameth said.

On the night the shooting took place, Nameth said, Singletary, Williams and the four girls had planned to go to a nearby home and drink alcohol. Singletary had previously dated one of the girls who was in the car that night.

“It was just a social thing,” Nameth said.

Nameth acknowledged that Singletary became angry after his altercation with the other youths, but said that he never intended to shoot them and had “no idea” Williams would do so.

“That’s the last thing in the world he wanted. He was very upset, but all he wanted to do was go punch them out. He has never had any weapons offenses. He is a guy who settles differences by fighting, not by shooting.”