Killing ruled justified in downtown chase

Jen Lawson

Thursday, Aug. 7, 2003 | 10:55 a.m.

A Metro Police K-9 officer was justified in killing an unarmed man who he said appeared to be committing a carjacking in downtown Las Vegas last month, a Clark County coroner's inquest jury ruled Wednesday.

The unanimous decision came after several courtroom outbursts by the dead man's girlfriend -- the person Officer David Newton thought Damien Morton was carjacking.

After 22-year-old April Wellington stormed out of the courtroom, Metro Police arrested her for an unrelated robbery that allegedly occurred Tuesday night.

The eight-member inquest jury deliberated for about 50 minutes after hearing testimony from several witnesses, then cleared Newton of any wrongdoing in connection with the July 6 shooting of Morton at Third Street and Bridger Avenue.

Wellington testified that a few days before she and Morton drove to Las Vegas from Denver for the Fourth of July weekend, Morton, who has a lengthy criminal record, cut off his electronic monitoring device. A warrant was then issued for his arrest.

Once in Las Vegas, she and Morton, 22, argued while driving around downtown. He wanted to go back to Denver, she said, and he pulled up to the Greyhound bus station and threatened to buy himself a bus ticket home.

Then Morton peeled away from the curb "and started driving crazy," Wellington said. "He was trying to scare me."

He drove the wrong way down Main Street, made a left onto Charleston and "played chicken" with a few cars -- including a marked Ford Expedition driven by Newton.

"I saw the lights and sirens go on and thought, 'Oh my God, here we go,' " Wellington said. Morton stepped on the gas and tried to get away because of his warrant from Colorado.

Newton testified that he thought the white Ford Taurus that almost hit him was driven by a drunken driver, "but he began picking up speed and driving erratically ... I realized he was trying to escape from me."

At Third Street and Bridger Avenue, Morton told Wellington he'd meet her later at their hotel, El Cortez, and ran from the car.

Newton said he and his police dog chased Morton down Fourth Street, through a parking lot and a parking garage while yelling, "Police department. Stop or I'll send the dog."

At one point, Morton lay down on the ground, but as soon as Newton called the dog back, Morton got up and continued running, Newton said.

Carlton Gunn, a slot floorperson at the Golden Nugget, was at Fourth and Bridger when he saw a man running toward his car with a dog and police officer chasing him.

The man, Morton, came up to his driver side window and "made a gesture toward his shorts and yanked on my door handle then banged on my passenger side glass," Gunn said.

"It looked like he was trying to get into my car and hijack my car," Gunn said. "I thought I was going to get beat up or get my car stolen."

Up until then, Newton said, Morton had just committed misdemeanors in connection with the reckless driving and fleeing. But when he banged on Gunn's car, "I realized we had a violent felony crime," Newton testified.

Another car pulled up, driven by Wellington, but Newton said he thought she was merely a curious citizen. He said he didn't realize until later that this was the Ford Taurus he had been chasing a few minutes earlier.

The windows of the Taurus were rolled down and Newton said a woman inside was screaming as Morton ran toward the car. Wellington testified earlier that she had been yelling for Morton to get in the car.

"I thought she was in imminent jeopardy," Newton said.

At that point Wellington jumped up from her seat in the courtroom Wednesday and yelled; "Then why would you shoot that close to my head? Think about that, jury!" She stormed out of the courtroom, followed by several police officers.

That was the second time Wellington had gotten verbally emotional. When she was on the witness stand earlier, one of the prosecutors put a postmortem photograph of Morton on an overhead projector and asked her if she knew who it was.

She put her hands over her face and moaned loudly, then shouted, "Yes I do!" and began crying. Defense attorney Steve Wolfson, who served as the inquest hearing officer, told her to "breathe in, breathe out" and a bailiff gave her a box of tissues.

"I'm sorry. It's just my love," Wellington said through tears.

After Wellington left the courtroom, Newton continued explaining that he thought an innocent bystander was about to get carjacked, and "the only option I had left was to fire my handgun."

Newton fired two shots, and after the second shot, Morton dove head-first into the driver side window of the Taurus onto Wellington's lap, he said. Newton said he was "a few car lengths away" when he shot Morton.

"The only reason I did what I did was the protect her from being hurt," Newton said.

After the shooting, Wellington raced to Lake Mead Hospital, where police forced her and Morton out of the car at gunpoint. They handcuffed Morton "while he was bleeding to death," Wellington said. He died about five hours later at University Medical Center.

She had testified that she ran over the police dog. And cabdriver Gerald Young said he "saw the tire hit the back of the German Shepherd and it knocked him around a bit," but the dog wasn't hurt, authorities said.

Dr. Larry Sims, a forensic pathologist, testified that Morton had a small amount of alcohol, marijuana and PCP in his system at the time of his death.

None of Morton's family members attended the inquest.

While jury members waited in line to be paid for the day, Patricia Pellegrino of Las Vegas said the jurors didn't consider ruling any other way.

"It was totally justifiable," she said firmly.

Assistant District Attorney Dan Bowman, who handled the inqueest, approached the jury members in the courtroom hallway and said he wanted to tell them a story.

He said he found out that morning that on Tuesday night that a woman lured a man into a room at the Blue Moon Hotel and committed a "trick roll," which is a case of a prostitute enticing a man into a situation in order to rob him.

"She told the victim she was from Denver and the cops shot and killed her boyfriend," Bowman said. Then, two men who had been hiding in a closet jumped out and robbed the man, Bowman alleged.

The alleged victim told police he had been robbed, and authorities realized the woman could be Wellington based on the information she gave the victim.

After Wellington left the courtroom in a rage, police took her in for questioning about the robbery, Bowman told the jurors. Wellington was later charged with robbery, conspiracy to commit robbery, burglary and solicitation, Bowman said.

The jurors stared at Bowman with surprised expressions and shook their heads.

"Unbelievable," one of them muttered.