Victim’s Mother Begins Campaign

The mother of a 7-year-old girl who was slain in a Nevada casino last year made her first public appearance Friday, launching a petition campaign to demand that authorities file criminal charges against the young Long Beach man who said he heard her daughter’s alleged murderer confess but did not tell police.

Yolanda Manuel said she believes that David Cash, 20, is an accessory in the murder of her daughter, Sherrice Iverson. Cash has said he saw his friend, Jeremy Strohmeyer, struggle with Sherrice in a casino bathroom and later heard Strohmeyer admit to the killing. Cash refused to notify police because “I didn’t want to be the person who takes away his last day, his last night of freedom,” he said later in an interview.

“He is a murderer within himself,” Manuel said angrily during a news conference in the Crenshaw district.

Meanwhile, two radio talk show hosts in Los Angeles are mounting a campaign to pressure UC Berkeley authorities to expel Cash, who begins his sophomore year at the university this fall.

The radio duo of Tim Conway Jr. and Doug Steckler from KLSX-FM (97.1) said they also consider Cash a co-conspirator in the slaying and have vowed to organize an on-campus protest to get him kicked out of the school.

Resentment toward Cash has increased since the July 19 publication of a Times article in which Cash expressed sympathy for Strohmeyer but no remorse for Sherrice--and no regrets about keeping quiet.

“I’m not going to get upset over someone else’s life,” Cash told The Times. “I just worry about myself first. I’m not going to lose sleep over somebody else’s problems.”

Despite the two campaigns, it appears doubtful that Cash will be expelled or charged in the crime, according to law enforcement authorities in Las Vegas and officials at UC Berkeley.

*

Police in Las Vegas say they have no grounds on which to ask prosecutors to charge Cash.

“There is no law that makes it mandatory to report a crime,” said Sgt. Kevin Manning of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. “It’s more of a moral issue.”

Manning said he doubts that Manuel’s petition drive will persuade authorities to charge Cash. “In my understanding, what he did does not fit into the definition of aiding and abetting,” Manning said.

UC Berkeley officials acknowledged that they have received several letters and phone calls urging the university to expel Cash. But they said they have no grounds on which to do that.

Jesus Mena, a university spokesman, noted that Cash, a graduate of Wilson High School, was accepted to UC Berkeley--based on his academic record--two months before Sherrice’s killing May 25, 1997.

“What has occurred since then is very disturbing,” Mena said. “But ultimately there is not much that an institution can do in a situation like this.”

He added: “Even if a student has been charged with a crime, our system of justice mandates that a person is considered innocent until proven guilty.”

According to police and grand jury testimony, Strohmeyer molested and strangled Sherrice in a toilet stall in the Primadonna casino after the two engaged in a game of hide and seek.

Cash was in the women’s bathroom with Strohmeyer and witnessed him struggle with the child. Cash said he left the bathroom before the molestation began, but said Strohmeyer confessed to the killing on the way out of the casino.

During her news conference Friday, Manuel read a poem in which she described her daughter as “my sweet angel.” After finishing the poem, she broke down in tears and walked away from a throng of reporters and television crews. She returned in a few minutes to vent her feelings against Strohmeyer and Cash.

“The way my child had to leave me, I’m very, very deeply hurt on the inside,” she said. “I have struggled with tremendous pain. I have suffered practically from a nervous breakdown.”

She wondered aloud why Strohmeyer--whose murder trial is scheduled to begin later this month in Las Vegas--might have killed her daughter.

“What could have put him up to do something like this,” she said. “That was my only child.”

As for Cash, she said: “Let’s try our best to get him out of this school, out of these colleges . . . wherever he may be, because he is a murderer within himself.”

Manuel’s petition drive is being managed by Nagee Ali, director of Project Islamic HOPE, who said he expects to collect 10,000 signatures to urge Nevada authorities to charge Cash as an accomplice in the crime.

Ali has also launched the Sherrice Iverson Justice Fund to pay for travel expenses so that Manuel and her mother can attend the trial. A fund-raiser has been set for Aug. 8 at the Crenshaw district’s Leimert Park Art Gallery.

In an on-air interview with Conway and Steckler last week, Cash insisted that he did nothing wrong and continued to express support and sympathy for Strohmeyer.

“I have a lot of remorse toward the Iverson family. It was a very tragic event,” he said. “The simple fact remains I don’t know this little girl. . . . I don’t know people in Panama or Africa who are killed every day so I can’t feel remorse for them. The only person I know is Jeremy Strohmeyer.”

His remarks infuriated the hosts.

“We are going to do everything we can to make life miserable for you and get you kicked out of Berkeley,” Conway told Cash. “You are every bit as guilty in the death of Sherrice Iverson as Jeremy Strohmeyer.”

*

The two talk show hosts repeatedly condemned and insulted Cash, in several cases using profanity. Cash dismissed the insults, saying he had been assured by Nevada authorities that he is not considered an accomplice.

“There is no chance that I will go to jail, simply because I have done nothing wrong,” Cash said.

In an interview with The Times after the radio show, Cash said efforts to punish him “have been going on for a year. I doubt it’ll have any effect on my life.”

Conway and Steckler said they hope dozens of Southern Californians will ride a bus to Berkeley to urge university officials to expel Cash.

What most angered him, Conway said, was Cash’s assertion in the July 19 Times article that the heavily publicized murder has made it easier for him to meet women at the university.

“We want to have everyone on campus aware that one of their peers in one of the most prestigious schools in the country is trying to use his fame to score with girls,” Conway said.

Times staff writer Nora Zamichow contributed to this story.