MARTINEZ — After a week of deliberations, a Contra Costa jury returned murder verdicts against three men charged in the 2016 fatal shooting of an East Bay musician, a crime authorities originally alleged was racially motivated.
Ray Simons, 36, Daniel Ortega, 35, and Daniel Porter-Kelly, 35, were all found guilty of murdering 28-year-old William Sims, who was shot and killed outside the now-defunct Capri Club bar in El Sobrante in 2016. The case was originally charged as a hate crime, until a grand jury rejected that enhancement a year later.
Simons, who shot Sims and argued at trial that he was guilty of manslaughter, not murder, was convicted of first-degree murder and faces life without the possibility of parole. Ortega and Porter-Kelly were convicted of second-degree murder and face a sentence of 15 years to life.
The month-long trial ended last week with three days of closing arguments, where the prosecutor, deputy district attorney Aron DeFerrari, went through the final night of Sims’ life. Sims was attacked in the back of the bar, beaten so extensively he suffered a cracked skull, and robbed of his wallet. Simons shot Sims in the head minutes later, after Sims staggered out to the front of the bar and smacked Simons’ car with both hands.
At the time of the shooting, Porter-Kelly was driving away, which his attorney argued completely absolved him of the shooting. Porter-Kelly has been out on bail for years while the case was pending.
The prosecution’s case was built largely on the word of Ortega’s girlfriend, who was present for the beating and shooting but told several versions of her story over the years. During cross-examination, Porter-Kelly’s attorney got her to admit she didn’t see Porter-Kelly attack Sims behind the bar.
At the start of the trial, DeFerrari described the events as one fluid act, linking the interactions between Sims and Porter-Kelly inside the bar, the subsequent beating behind the bar, and the shooting out front. He said Sims was doing “harmless flirting” with two women Porter-Kelly was talking to, which annoyed Porter-Kelly enough to call him the racist slur and mockingly refer to Sims as “Urkel,” a reference to a Black character from a television show.
Behind the bar, Sims offered to buy cocaine from Simons but didn’t have money, leading to the confrontation and the attack. Before he was attacked, Sims falsely claimed to have a gun in his car because he was starting to sense danger, DeFerrari said.
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Source: www.mercurynews.com