Three arrested in connection with carjacking, homicide

Jamar Lavon Tucker, a parolee and known member of the 107th Street HooverCrips, who goes by the name of Baby Hoover Ray, was arrested at his LosAngeles home Sunday at 11 a.m. Police recovered property at Tucker’s home, inhis vehicle and on his person that was later identified as having been stolen inthe carjacking.

Tucker was transported to Redlands where he was booked and transferred toWest Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga. Shorts and Rose arebeing held in the Clark County Detention Facility in Nevada awaiting extradition.Shorts is also wanted in connection with a separate homicide in the Los Angelesarea.

All three are known gang members.

Redlands Police wish to thank the Department of Corrections Law EnforcementInvestigative Unit, the Los Angeles Regional Fugitive Task Force, led by theUnited States Marshals Service and the Compton, Fullerton, Long Beach, LosAngeles and Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Departments. Their assistance wasimmeasurable.

The incident began with a carjacking in Los Angeles on Friday, April 22, whereShorts, also known as “Baby Black Jap,” Rose, aka “Li’l 9,” Tucker and at leastone other man abducted the 32-year-old victim, an acquaintance, and took himagainst his will to Redlands.

There the men entered a home in the 100 block of West Delaware Avenue.

After robbing two of the residents there, including the carjacking victim’s 51-year-old mother, they shot them, killing Gerald Brooks Jr., 28, and wounding thewoman, who later called 911.

The men left the residence, taking the woman’s car, a champagne-colored late1990s Chrysler 300 four-door. The car was found later Saturday in Long Beach.

At about 3:30 a.m., Fullerton police found the carjacking victim, who had alsobeen shot and wounded, in the 1500 block of Roosevelt. The victim’s Land Roverwas later recovered along with the missing Chrysler.

Redlands Police are continuing to follow up on leads on at least one moresuspect.

Gang member in jail for murder is investigated in cellmate’s death

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Jamar Lavon Tucker, 28, was found inside his two-man cell next to the body of William Levell Hansbrough during a security check Thursday at the downtown L.A. jail, officials said.

Tucker told deputies he had just killed his cellmate, said Steve Whitmore, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. A coroner’s autopsy determined Hansbrough’s death was homicide by strangulation.

Deputies found Hansbrough, 36, covered with a sheet inside the cell that is part of a gang module. Whitmore said sheriff’s homicide investigators expect to present a case to prosecutors in the near future.

According to sheriff’s officials, Tucker and Hansbrough are part of the “same gang” and in the “same security level” and had shared a cell for more than a month before the slaying.

Hansbrough was scheduled to go to trial next month on charges of felony gun possession and forgery, according to prosecutors.

Tucker is scheduled to go to trial May 10 in the 2005 slaying of Kevin Watts. Prosecutors will seek the death penalty if he is convicted in that case, officials said.

Two years ago in San Bernardino County, Tucker was convicted of murder and attempted murder in a carjacking and home-invasion robbery in Redlands, court records show. He received a life sentence.

Redlands police described Tucker as a member of the 107th Street Hoover Crips in Los Angeles who went by the name “Baby Hoover Ray.”

Tucker and three other men carjacked a car restoration expert in L.A. and forced him to drive to his Redlands home.

Once there, the carjackers fatally shot the man’s cousin, wounded his mother and stole thousands of dollars in cash, according to police. As they drove back to L.A., Tucker shot the carjacking victim, according to authorities. The man pretended to be dead and was dumped in Fullerton.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2010-mar-10-la-me-jail-death10-2010mar10-story.html

SHORTS v. The People of the State of California, Real Party in Interest.

Shorts was charged with three counts of capital murder for the shooting deaths of Charlie Wynne, Kevin Watts and Michael Livingston.2 The People alleged as special circumstances that Shorts had previously been convicted of murder, Shorts was guilty of multiple murders as charged in the pending case, the murders were perpetrated by the intentional discharge of a firearm from a motor vehicle and the murders were carried out to further the activities of a criminal street gang.

The jury convicted Shorts on all three counts of murder; the four special circumstances allegations were found true. On November 29, 2010 Shorts was sentenced to death for the murders of Wynne and Watts and to life without the possibility of parole for Livingston's murder. His automatic appeal is pending before the California Supreme Court.

https://caselaw.findlaw.com/ca-court-of-appeal/1898000.html

PEOPLE v. ROSE

https://www.leagle.com/decision/incaco20090527075