Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2003 | 11:10 a.m.
Newly released grand jury transcripts reveal the testimony of three young men who claim alleged gang member Steven Gazlay violently attacked them on two occasions in northwest Las Vegas.
In the court documents released Tuesday, several teens link Gazlay, 18, to two attacks during the summer, one with a crowbar and another with a hot butter knife.
The testimony persuaded a grand jury to indict Gazlay on three felony counts. Gazlay and eight other teens already face 13 felony counts stemming from an attack on 17-year-old Stephen Tanner Hansen, in which Hansen was maimed when he was hit with a rock.
In the grand jury transcripts from one case, Sean Quinn, 20, said about 150 people were gathered in an area near the Las Vegas Beltway and Centennial Parkway on May 17 when a teenage boy attacked him with what looked like a crowbar.
"A long metal object," he said. "I was told it was a police baton."
Quinn said he fell to the ground and got back up, but the teen struck him with the bar again. Other teens then began to join in the attack, he said.
"I fell back down and then I started getting kicked and hit again," he said. "I believe there were others. I believe they came up afterwards and started kicking and hitting me."
In looking at police photographs after the incident, Quinn identified Gazlay as the person he believed attacked him. He said he was "70 to 80 percent sure" that Gazlay was the attacker.
Another teen, James Sarlo, who said he witnessed the attack on Quinn, identified Gazlay as Quinn's attacker and said Gazlay tried to attack him as well. He testified that Gazlay swung the crowbar at him when he jumped in to help Quinn.
"I ran and shoved (Gazlay) back because I seen Sean there and I noticed he was bleeding really bad, and that's when Steve swung the object at me," he said.
Gazlay faces a charge of assault for allegedly hitting Sarlo with the crowbar.
Sarlo told the grand jury that he was not sure if Gazlay hit him or not.
"I just had so much adrenaline," he said.
In the second case, Jason Cammilleri, 18, said he and 40 to 50 other teens were at a house party near Farm Road and the Las Vegas Beltway on July 21 when Gazlay and Anthony Gallion burned him with a hot butter knife. Gallion has not been charged in the incident.
Cammilleri said Gazlay and Gallion had heated the knife over the stove until it became "orange hot" and then placed it against his right ear and the side of his neck.
"It just burnt the skin off," he said. "The skin, I looked at it and it fell off, my skin fell off."
Police say the behavior Quinn and Cammilleri described for the grand jury is the type of violence the 311 Boyz are known for. They say the teens are responsible for a string of equally brutal summer assaults in northwest Las Vegas, most of them unprovoked.
The grand jury that heard the young men's testimony later indicted Gazlay in two separate cases. He faces one count each of battery with use of a deadly weapon resulting in substantial bodily harm and assault with use of a deadly weapon in the crowbar case. He faces a single count of battery with use of a deadly weapon resulting in substantial bodily harm in connection with the butter knife case.
Gazlay's attorney, James "Bucky" Buchanan, said he has plenty of eyewitnesses who paint a different picture of the events that unfolded the night Cammilleri was burned. Buchanan said Cammilleri burned his own ear.
"I also have other eyewitnesses that are hesitant to come forward because they are afraid of retaliation if they testify against Cammilleri," he said.
Buchanan on Monday filed a motion seeking to dismiss the indictments that charge his client in all three cases. Buchanan claims a man named Ralph Smith sat on the grand jury that indicted the teens and wrote a "prejudiced and biased" letter about the case to the Review-Journal.
The defense attorney claims the Smith's statements criticizing the teens make the indictment improper. He says the indictment should be dismissed and a new grand jury brought in.
Smith's name is listed as one of the jurors who deliberated in all three cases. District Attorney David Roger said prosecutors were investigating Buchanan's claims.
According to grand jury transcripts, another grand juror was exempted from from deliberations because a relative dated Gazlay. Buchanan said he did not think that was improper.
In his testimony before the grand jury, Cammilleri said he was sitting on the couch talking to a girl, and Gazlay and Gallion, who was also charged in the attack on Hansen, were standing by the stove. Gazlay was holding a knife over the fire on the stove, Cammilleri said.
"The knife was sitting on the flame turning bright orange burning," he said.
Cammilleri said Gazlay asked him to come over to the stove, but he refused. Cammilleri said he did not want to go into the kitchen because he suspected that Gazlay "was probably going to do something stupid with the knife."
Cammilleri said he had turned his back to Gazlay and was finishing his conversation with the girl when Gazlay and Gallion came up behind them and burned Cammilleri.
"I'm talking to the girl and the girl goes, 'Jay, watch out,' and I look over and they both put the knife to my ear," he said.
After the incident, the two teens "continued partying. Drinking more beer probably ... It was like they didn't even do it, they didn't even care," Cammilleri said.
In the second case, Quinn testified that he had gotten into a fist fight with a young man named Adam "Taz" Henry and had narrowly escaped that brawl when the teen identified as Gazlay approached him. Henry was charged with battery in the attack, but negotiated his case with prosecutors and was given probation.
He said the teen with the crowbar asked him why he hit Gazlay's sister. Quinn told the teen he hadn't hit the sister, he said.
"I said 'I don't know your sister, I didn't hit your sister,' and that's when I looked down for about three or four seconds because I noticed something in his hand and he hits me," he said.
Quinn said he escaped the violence by hopping into the back of one of his friend's trucks and speeding away from the desert area. Quinn suffered a broken jaw in the attack.
Sarlo said "Sean was on the ground, about 15 to 20 people kicking him, and nobody stopped."
Cammilleri said he knew Gazlay "just by parties and him beating people up." Quinn said he had never met Gazlay before.
Cammilleri said he and Gazlay hung out with the same group of friends about a year and a half ago.
"Some of us, we would never have anything to do, they would go out and like fight people and stuff, and the people that didn't like fighting would just stand off to the side," he said.
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