‘You don’t know what I’m capable of’: Woman who felt slighted at a party orchestrated fatal shooting, police say
A night of partying took a deadly turn in Glendale early Saturday morning when a 25-year-old man was fatally shot over insults directed at an 18-year-old woman he’d met hours earlier, police said.
Police believe the woman, identified as Napa resident Dezerea Lyons, orchestrated the attack through phone calls and text messages to her two friends, men who later showed up with guns.
Less than 24 hours after the shooting, Glendale police arrested Lyons, as well as the suspected gunmen — Suisun City resident Laquan Parker, 24, and Stockton resident Brandon Perkins, 26 — on suspicion of murder, according to Glendale Police Sgt. Robert William.
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On Friday night, the victim, identified as Phillip Niles Jr., was out with friends in Los Angeles, where he met Lyons and her friend. Eventually, the group moved the party to a Glendale apartment on the 1700 block of North Verdugo Road, where Lyons felt insulted by comments made by Niles, a recent Los Angeles transplant from Daytona Beach, Fla. Exactly what he said was not clear.
“You don’t know me,” she told him, according to police. “You don’t know what I’m capable of.”
After firing off some text messages and phone calls, the two men arrived, so she grabbed her friend and left the apartment. Niles walked them out, though investigators don’t know why.
Outside, the two gunmen were waiting.
Lyons and her friend — who investigators say was not involved in the attack — climbed into the car, while Perkins and Parker reportedly confronted Niles.
Just before 4 a.m., neighbors heard the gunfire.
Investigators are working to determine if one or both of the gunmen pulled the trigger.
With multiple gunshot wounds, Niles ran a short distance before collapsing on the front lawn of an elderly couple’s home on the 1600 block of The Midway Street, William said.
When police arrived, he was dead.
His friends, meanwhile, thought he’d gone home.
Investigators spent hours canvassing the neighborhood, going door-to-door searching for leads.
“They went from not knowing the victim, to a complete ‘whodunit’ case, to seriously putting some good work into it,” William said.
Detectives discovered that the two men jumped in the car and fled to a Comfort Inn in Monrovia, where they had rented a room. Lyons’ friend had reportedly asked Parker and Perkins to let her go, but they held her against her will, so police also arrested the men on suspicion of false imprisonment. The friend eventually made it home.
The trio was arrested Saturday after investigators spotted them walking out of the Monrovia hotel. In the getaway car, police reportedly recovered two handguns. Each suspect being held in lieu of $2 million bail.
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Alene Tchekmedyian, alene.tchekmedyian@latimes.com
Twitter: @atchek
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