NorCal Woman Orchestrated Glendale Man's Shooting Death: Police

GLENDALE, CA - Two men and a woman from Northern California were in custody Monday on $2 million bail each in what police said was the ambush killing in Glendale of a man who had insulted the woman.

The male suspects were identified as 24-year-old Laquan Parker from Suisun City and 26-year-old Brandon Perkins of Stockton. The woman was identified as 18-year-old Dezerea Lyons of Napa.

They were booked on suspicion of murder and false imprisonment, and were scheduled to appear in a Glendale courtroom on Tuesday.

Phillip Niles Jr., 25, who had moved to Los Angeles from Daytona Beach, Florida, was gunned down around 4 a.m. Saturday in front of an apartment building in the 1700 block of north Verdugo Road, according to Glendale police.

The night before, the victim was out with friends and later came to the Verdugo Road apartment where one of his friends lived, police said. They were joined by two female acquaintances -- Lyons and another young woman -- whom they had met earlier that night, police said.

At 3:55 a.m. Saturday, Niles stepped outside with the women, where he was approached by the two male suspects and was shot, police said. Niles ran a short distance and collapsed on the front of the lawn of a home in the 1600 block of Midway Street, where he died.

The two male suspects and the two women fled the scene in the same vehicle. Detectives arrested the suspects outside a Comfort Inn in Monrovia at about 11 p.m. Saturday. The second female who was with Lyons had no involvement in the crime and had wanted to leave, but Parker and Perkins held her against her will in their hotel room, police said.

Police said they recovered two handguns from the car.

Glendale Police Sgt. Robert William told the Los Angeles Times that Lyons felt insulted by comments made by Niles, but what he said was not clear.

"You don't know me," she told him, according to police. "You don't know what I'm capable of."

After Lyons sent text messages and made phone calls, the two men arrived outside, and she grabbed her friend and left the apartment, The Times reported. When Niles walked them outside, the two gunmen were waiting and he was shot.

Neighbors heard the gunfire, and when police arrived, Niles was dead. His friends, meanwhile, thought he had gone home. Investigators spent hours canvassing the neighborhood, searching for leads.

"They went from not knowing the victim, to a complete 'whodunit' case, to seriously putting some good work into it," William said.

— City News Service, photo via Shutterstock