Lawyer: Teen’s bullets didn’t wound victims

Thursday, April 7, 2005 | 8:54 a.m.

An alleged member of an Asian gang who is accused of wounding four people at an Internet lounge in 2003 did fire a gun at the scene but was not the one whose bullets hit the victims, his defense lawyer told jurors Wednesday.

Chanon Somee is charged with four counts of attempted murder in connection with the shooting at Web Joy Internet lounge, 2605 S. Decatur Blvd. at Sahara Avenue. He was 15 at the time of the shooting.

Under Nevada law anyone older than 8 and charged with homicide or attempted homicide must be tried as an adult unless a judge rules otherwise.

One of the victims, Ralph Sambilay, was left paralyzed from the waist down as a result of suffering a bullet wound to his back. Prosecutors allege Somee also shot Aaron Adler in the lower back and Ryan Sana in the the left hip and finger.

Gary Rubrico also was shot at, but never hit, according to prosecutors.

In opening arguments Thursday, Chief Deputy District Attorney Victoria Villegas said Somee was arrested a month after the shooting for carrying a concealed weapon, a silver .25 caliber handgun that detectives matched to the bullet casings recovered at the crime scene.

Villegas said that after Somee was arrested, he admitted to committing the shootings.

Somee's attorney, Melinda Simpkins, contends prosecutors have no evidence to prove the bullets fired from Somee's gun were the bullets that hit any of the four victims. Simpkins said that while five bullet casings recovered by detectives match Somee's gun, no one has been able to determine if those bullets caused any of the injuries suffered by the victims in the case.

Simpkins said Somee was acting in self-defense the night of the shooting after an unidentified alleged member of another gang, the Asian Gangster Boys, fired a gun at him. She said detectives found two .38 caliber bullets at the scene, which would support both Somee and eyewitness claims there was another shooter involved.

Simpkins said eyewitness testimony will show Somee shot second and was simply reacting to being shot at.

Detectives have never located the other shooter.

The defense lawyer said Somee was "not the shooter, but a shooter" involved in the incident.

If Somee is convicted on all four counts of attempted murder and gets the maximum sentence he could spend the rest of his life in prison.

Detective Tom Bateson of the Metro gang Crimes Bureau said there were roughly 400 active gangs in Las Vegas out of which more than a dozen are Asian gangs.

Bateson said the Horny Boys, the gang to which Somee allegedly belongs, has about 25 members. They are what's left of the Kick Boxer gang that thrived in the early 1990s, Bateson said.

He said the gang members are of Laotian, Thai, Filipino and Cambodian descent.

Bateson said the gang's criminal activity focuses mainly on residential and commercial burglaries, robberies, home invasions of other Asian families and homicide. He said for the most part Asian gangs only commit crimes against other Asian gangs just as Hispanic and African-American gangs usually lash out against gangs of their own race.

The detective said although he once believed the Asian Gangster Boys was a gang, he has learned through interviews with members and research that the 10 to 12 individuals belonging to the group are actually a social group and don't meet the definition of a gang as laid out in Nevada law.

The prosecution is expected to continue its case this morning in the trial expected to run until the end of next week before District Judge Michelle Leavitt.