Slaying Suspect’s Friend Not Seen as Accomplice

Authorities may still file charges against the companion of the accused killer of 7-year-old Sherrice Iverson, but a prosecutor said Monday that David Cash Jr. appeared to be a witness in the case, not an accomplice.

Jeremy Strohmeyer, 18, was arrested Wednesday in the rape and slaying of the girl, whose body was found in a stall in a women’s restroom at the Primadonna Resort on the California-Nevada border. Police say that Cash, 18, accompanied Strohmeyer to the resort’s video arcade and saw him struggle with the child in the women’s restroom.

Clark County Dist. Atty. Stewart Bell said Monday that he would make a final decision on whether to file charges against Cash after reviewing the investigation report from Las Vegas homicide detectives, probably later this week.

But Bell said the reports he has reviewed, which include media reports and preliminary police reports, “seem to indicate [Cash] was a witness, not a principal.”

The fact that Cash did not immediately report what, if anything, he had seen does not make him vulnerable to prosecution, Bell said. “Silence is not a crime,” he said. To charge him as an accomplice, “we would have to have evidence that Cash actually did something . . . with the thought and intent of helping Strohmeyer.”

Police said last week that Cash followed Strohmeyer into the restroom, saw him wrestling with the girl in a stall, tried to get his attention and, when he couldn’t, left. The two apparently continued from Primm, on the state border, to Las Vegas in a car with Cash’s father.

Strohmeyer, a senior at Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach, is expected in a courtroom as early as today to face an initial extradition hearing. Bell said that he expects extradition to take place in about 30 days.