Murder Trail Starts in 2004 Case Where Victim Was Gunned Down in Front of Home

A prosecutor told jurors today to hold an ex-felon responsible for the fatal shooting of a witness in Brentwood in 2004 who was scheduled to testify against him in a grand theft case the following day.

Larry Fuller, 45, is on trial for the murder of 36-year-old witness Sanjay Samy, who was gunned down outside his home in the 2900 block of Haddington Court at about 6 a.m. on Oct. 26, 2004.

In her opening statement, prosecutor Stacie Pettigrew said that when investigators searched Fuller after the killing, they found a note with detailed directions to Samy's home from Fuller's residence in Oakland. Pettigrew admitted that there isn't any direct evidence that connects Fuller to Samy's death but she said there is substantial circumstantial evidence, such as fingerprints, handwriting evidence and cellphone records. Samy was the prosecution's sole witness in a grand theft case in which Fuller had brought his car into a Castro Valley auto repair shop on Dec. 18, 2003, for repairs but had used a spare key to speed off without paying his $2,700 bill, Pettigrew said.

The prosecutor said Samy was scheduled to testify at Fuller's preliminary hearing on Oct. 27, 2004, but when he went out for his regular walk early the previous morning he was shot four times in the head, including twice at point blank range.

Pettigrew alleged that Fuller "had to make sure that Mr. Samy wouldn't be available to testify the next morning." She said Samy's wife, who found him in a pool of blood in their driveway, told police that she had heard a man shout an expletive at Samy, heard her husband yell, "No!" and then heard gunshots. But Fuller's lawyer Jane Brown told jurors that he is "an innocent man who's wrongfully accused of a horrible crime." Noting that Fuller wasn't charged with murdering Samy until last year, Brown alleged that authorities charged him only because, "It was the easy way to close this case after 11 years." Prosecutors had "tunnel vision" and focused on him all along even though there were other possible suspects, Brown said.

She said investigators searched for additional evidence against Fuller for more than a decade but never found any. Brown, who said she will ask jurors to find Fuller not guilty, also said Fuller only had "a very weak motive" to kill Samy because he likely wouldn't have faced any more time in custody if he'd been convicted of the grand theft case. She said that's because Fuller, who has previous convictions for second-degree robbery, battery with serious bodily injury and perjury under oath, had already served close to a year in jail for violating his parole and prosecutors were discussing a plea agreement that wouldn't have called for him to serve any more jail time. "What sense does the motive make?" Brown asked the jurors.

Pettigrew said Fuller previously had brought a car to the same Castro Valley auto shop in August 2000 and had retrieved it without paying his bill. She said that when Fuller came back to the auto repair shop on Dec. 18, 2003, he used a different name, Paul Downs. Pettigrew said, "He did the same crime at the same business by using an alias."

--Bay City News