Witness fails to identify Duarte

Erica D. Johnson

Thursday, July 24, 2003 | 8:51 a.m.

The case against the man charged in a 1999 casino heist in which two armored truck guards were shot got off to a rocky start Wednesday when a key eyewitness for the state was unable to identify the suspect as the getaway driver.

In a December 2001 preliminary hearing, John Thornburg, a tourist from California, had testified that he saw Pedro Duarte, 38, and two other men exit a sport utility vehicle and load three nylon bags into a red pickup truck at the Vagabond Inn moments after shots rang out at the Desert Inn.

But on Wednesday Thornburg mistakenly identified defense attorney Michael Cristalli, and not Duarte, as the man he saw exit the truck with the other men.

The slip came after prosecutors gave Thornburg several chances to identify Duarte as the suspect. Thornburg pointed to Cristalli after stepping off the witness stand and putting on his glasses.

When Roger Cram stood behind Cristalli and asked Thornburg if he was sure Cristalli, who was dressed in a cream-colored suit, was the man he saw, Thornburg stuck to his answer.

"Yes," he said. "The man in the light suit. The man to the right."

Duarte wore a dark suit during Wednesday's proceedings.

When further pressed by prosecutors, Thornburg recanted, saying neither Cristalli nor Duarte was the man he saw exit the vehicle.

"Do you see that person in the courtroom today?" Cram asked.

"No," Thornburg said.

Thornburg's testimony had been expected to pin Duarte to the crime, in which two men in ski masks robbed a Brinks armored truck in front of the Desert Inn and exchanged shots with guards.

The guards were preparing to deliver cash and coins to the casino in a routine drop-off. One guard was shot in the arm and a second officer was shot in the leg during the incident.

Authorities allege the men sped off in a bronze SUV before switching vehicles and jumping into a red truck in the parking lot of the Vagabond Inn.

Duarte, who prosecutors believe drove both getaway vehicles, faces seven felony counts in the heist, including attempt murder, robbery and conspiracy to commit robbery.

Thornburg said he was walking his dog in the alley behind the Vagabond Inn, where he was staying, when he heard gunshots coming from the direction of the Desert Inn.

"I heard about 25 to 30 pops, which I thought were firecrackers," he said. "A minute later an Isuzu Rodeo came screeching across the alley where I was at."

He said the SUV pulled into a covered parking stall next to where his car was parked and three Hispanic men got out of the truck.

The driver of the SUV, whom he said was Duarte, then got into a Red Nissan pickup truck that was parked on the other side of the Rodeo, Thornburg said.

"It had no license plate, I remember that," he said. "It was parked so it could drive straight out. It was backed in."

As the driver got behind the wheel and fiddled with something in the dashboard, Thornburg said, a third man transferred three bags from the Rodeo to the pickup truck and the other two men got into the truck.

"He removed about three nylon bags and put them in the back of the pickup," he said. "All I remember was the clunk as it hit."

After the men sped off, Thornburg went to inspect the Rodeo, which the men had left running, he said.

A shell casing was still embedded on the truck's running board, he said.

Thornburg returned to Las Vegas from California a year after the incident to participate in a police lineup at the Clark County Detention Center, but he was unable to identify Duarte at that time.

He said that when the lineup was conducted he "was very nervous and very uncomfortable."

"I just wanted to get out of there," he said.