By admin 
There was no plan, no standoff between gang rivals, no battle for pride and respect at 10th and K streets, Mtula Payton’s attorney told jurors Wednesday.
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But there was a catalyst for the carnage to come, Reid Kingsbury said: Sergio Harris.
“Sergio Harris is acting independently,” Kingsbury said. “When he does that, all hell breaks loose. Dandrae Martin is shot in the arm. Mtula Payton runs like hell. Mtula Payton didn’t cause that melee to occur. He had nothing to do with it. He reacts to an assassination covertly carried out by Sergio Harris.”
Attorneys posed dueling accounts of Payton and Martin’s roles in the deadly 2022 K Street shootings as closing arguments resumed Wednesday in the pair’s murder trial in Sacramento Superior Court.
Prosecuting attorney Megan Eixenberger in closing remarks Tuesday and again Wednesday morning depicted the sudden killings that would become Sacramento’s deadliest-ever mass shooting as a “lethal zone of danger,” with an armed Martin and Payton at its center.
“They are armed with firearms during that time. Challenges are being made. Firearms are out. Weapons are drawn. They come together, then they shoot,” Eixenberger said. “They construct a lethal zone of danger that kills those three bystanders.”
Trial jurors will soon decide whether Payton and Martin are guilty of murder in the shooting deaths of Yamile Martinez, 21; Johntaya Alexander, 21; and Melinda Davis, 57, in the hail of bullets on a panicked K Street, early April 3, 2022. Closing arguments are expected to conclude this week.
Three involved in what prosecutors said was a gang-fueled shootout. — Sergio Harris, 38; Joshua Hoye-Lucchessi, 32; and Davazia Turner, 29 — were also killed.
“They’re going to say liability died on the cement with Harris, Hoye and Turner. But liability didn’t die on the cement that night. It’s sitting right there,” Eixenberger continued, pointing at Payton and Martin. “Nobody’s getting a pass here. This was fueled by anger and gang expectations. They had to settle a score — a gang score.”
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But Kingsbury and, later, defense attorney Linda Parisi, placed blame for the killings squarely on Harris, arguing it was Harris who fired the first shot that triggered the chaos.
Kingsbury earlier in the trial argued that Sergio Harris was the first to open fire, fatally shooting Davazia Turner before Harris, himself, was killed.
Both attorneys argued that Payton, with friend Turner; Martin, with brother Smiley, had no conflicts with the alleged shooters that night.
“Where’s the evidence that anyone was ‘settling a score?’” Parisi asked at one point. “There was no score to be settled.”
“This is a chaotic scene (and) it’s the product of Sergio Harris firing that first shot and getting things started,” Parisi said in her closing argument. “Sergio Harris is responsible for what happened. He was certainly the catalyst. That he wasn’t here doesn’t mean we go to the next person.”
But once the shooting started, Dandrae Martin, who was shot in the left arm; and Payton, also shot, took out their own weapons to defend themselves.
“Sergio had shot his friend, other people are killed. His brother has been shot, as has he,” Parisi said of Dandrae Martin. “He’s prohibited from having a gun, but he’s not prohibited from acting in self-defense.”
Kingsbury gave a similar summary for his client.
“He was running for his life. This was a moment of survival. The threat did not stop. It did not slow down. It did not become safe …. Mtula Payton faced one reality: Gunfire, danger and survival,” Kingsbury said.
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Closing arguments will resume Thursday in Sacramento Superior Court.