Only one held in shooting death of girl, 9

Kim Smith

Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2002 | 11:06 a.m.

The Clark County District Attorney's office has approved charges against only one of four alleged gang members arrested in the shooting death of an 9-year-old girl.

Charges against the three others will be dropped due to a lack of evidence, and the men will be released from jail, a prosecutor said.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Dan Bowman filed three charges against Pascual Lozano, 22, Monday -- two counts of attempted murder and one count of open murder.

Lozano was arraigned this morning in North Las Vegas Justice Court. A preliminary hearing will be held Oct. 1, Chief Deputy District Attorney Ed Kane said.

Bowman said police believe Lozano was traveling in a car with three black men Sept. 7 when they saw a man from a rival gang passing by on a bicycle. The men flashed gang signs at the bicyclist and then one of the men got out of the car and began firing at the man, police allege.

One of the shots struck and killed Genesis Estrada, 9, killing her, and another shot hit her 8-year-old sister, Heidi, in the thigh.

Lozano was the only Hispanic man in the car and witnesses said the shooter was Hispanic, Bowman said.

"The witnesses also got the plates, but by the time police arrived, the occupants were standing around the car," Bowman said. "The car was registered to one of the black men's aunts and he had the keys in his pocket, but no one could identify him as the driver."

Unless or until other evidence comes to light, Lozano will be the only one prosecuted for the crime, Bowman said. The charges against Ricky Richardson, 20, Vontrell Davis, 20, and Narsha Riles, 24, will be dropped.

As of this morning Davis and Riles remained jailed in North Las Vegas.

Kane said there are many parallels between the Estrada slaying and that of Gwendolyn Jones in May 2001.

Jones was the unintended victim of a gang-related drive-by shooting.

In each case witnesses were reluctant to come forward and charges had to be dismissed against people police suspected were involved in the crimes, Kane said.

Prosecutors were able to refile charges in the Jones case seven months after her slaying, when police tied an AK-47 found in a traffic stop to evidence seized in the Jones case.

The suspects in that case are awaiting trial.

In the Estrada case, Kane said the bicyclist initially denied even being the intended victim, saying he wasn't there at the time.

"If you write about this case, please tell everyone the investigation is continuing," Kane said. "We need people who saw something to come forward. Too many times people are either too afraid or they want to put their heads down and not get involved."

This is not Lozano's first run-in with the law. Lozano was 17 when in 1997 he was sentenced to 34 to 84 months in state prison for battery with a deadly weapon, according to court records.

He was convicted in a 1996 shooting that wounded several people.

Lozano was released from prison on parole in June 1999, but his parole was revoked soon afterward, said Ed Henderson of the state Division of Parole and Probation. The reason was not available this morning.

He was released to a halfway house in Northern Nevada in July 2000, but ran away. He was arrested in September 2000 by Metro Police and returned to prison, Henderson said.

He was released from prison in July 2001 after completing his sentence.

Police say Estrada was killed while trying to protect an infant boy from the gunfire.