Alleged Killer Trolled for Victims, Witness Says

A man accused of killing a woman during a robbery as she picked up her daughter from Bible study spent several nights trolling the West San Fernando Valley for robbery victims, but stole only “chump change” from them, an alleged accomplice testified Tuesday.

Stacey Rich told Los Angeles Superior Court jurors that defendant Etienne Moore, a friend of nine years, told him he targeted “people with nice cars who looked like they had money,” followed them home and robbed them at gunpoint.

Rich, who has been granted immunity for his testimony, said he found Moore’s plan “cool” and joined him and others for several robberies, none involving murder, he testified.

Using street slang, Rich described several poorly planned and executed crimes sometimes foiled by screaming women, and once ending with Moore accidentally shooting his car as he ran toward it to escape. Rich said the participants always split the cash, but that there was not much to go around.

“It was always chump change,” he said. His take amounted, he said, to “two or three dollars, three or four dollars. It would be beer money when I got home.”

Deputy Dist. Attys. Janice Maurizi and Edwin Greene allege that Moore and LaCedrick Johnson robbed about 30 people during a 1993 series of crimes punctuated by the murder of Laurie Myles, who was shot Sept. 15, 1993, after she gave her attackers her purse and briefcase. Her son, who was 9 years old at the time, cowered in the car as the bandits killed his 37-year-old mother in the driveway of a home where they were waiting to pick up his sister from a Bible study class.

The pair is also accused of the robbery and killing of the 20-year-old former girlfriend of a third defendant, Shashonee Solomon, who is charged with ordering the slaying.

They face the death penalty if convicted.