While interviews with an ex-girlfriend and a key piece of physical evidence were among the items a judge cited to send the murder case against a 34-year-old Long Beach man to trial, something else stood out to her during a preliminary hearing that was not included in the evidence list Wednesday, Oct. 30.
“He smirked when he saw himself on video,” Judge Debra A. Cole said of the defendant, Troy Lamar Fox. “He knew it was him.”
Fox was charged in September with murder and four counts of attempted murder in the March 26 fatal shooting of 17-year-old Briana Soto and an April 9 incident in which he fired shots at four people in a car.
Cole made her ruling in a courtroom packed with family and friends of Soto, most wearing pink shirts, after a two-hour hearing during which she heard at least some of the evidence against Fox and considered whether there was probable cause that he was responsible for the crimes.
Some of the videos show a man in dark clothing walking in the neighborhood where Soto was shot just minutes before the shooting. Others showed a video of a man getting out of a car in a parking lot and appearing to shoot at another car that had entered and briefly stopped. No one was injured in that shooting, which occurred near 14th Street and Pine Avenue.
“For the record, I didn’t smirk or nothing,” Fox said as he was led out of the courtroom following the hearing.
A motion to dismiss the charges by Fox’s attorney was denied.
Prosecutors allege Fox gunned down Soto as she was walking home from work at McDonald’s just before 8:30 p.m. in the area of 11th Street and Lewis Avenue. Soto was steps from her home when she was shot and died days later at a hospital.
Police, during a press conference asking for the public’s help in identifying a suspect, said it didn’t appear the suspect took any of Soto’s belongings.
A motive for the shooting was still not known after Wednesday’s hearing.
Soto’s boyfriend, Ricardo Choza, testified that he was on the phone with her when suddenly he heard her scream followed by one “pop noise.” He stayed on the line and eventually someone else picked up the phone and said she was on the ground and bleeding. Choza then ran over and found her bloodied and non-responsive.
At the scene, detectives found clothing that had been cut off while paramedics attempted life-saving measures on Soto and a pink cannister of pepper spray, Long Beach detective Chasen Contreras said.
Police found four 9-millimeter shell casings at the scene, one of which was found to have Fox’s DNA. Among the other evidence were interviews with his ex-girlfriend where she identified him in the videos and cell phone records that placed Fox in the area of both shootings.
The ex-girlfriend, Tyrisha Hawkins, reluctantly testified with the promise of immunity Wednesday and at first denied identifying Fox for detectives, but under cross-examination by Frisco, said the man in the videos appeared to be Fox. Hawkins audibly sighed multiple times during questioning and, for the most part, did not look up when answering.
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Detectives who testified said Hawkins lived near the crime scene and that Fox had access to her car, which was identified as hers by license plate on the video of the April 9 shooting. Hawkins testified that during March and April, Fox would sometimes stay with her at her home.
But Hawkins also told detectives that on March 26, shortly before the shooting, she was in her car with a friend parked on Lewis Avenue just north of 10th Street when she saw a man in all black walk by and pull the strings on his hoodie in an attempt to conceal his face. She and the friend did not see the shooting and she said she heard about it the next day through news, Instagram and friends. She said she could not identify the man who walked by.
Hawkins was interviewed by detectives in March and September following weapons-related arrests, Contreras said.
Contreras said Soto and Fox crossed paths at 10th Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, with Soto crossing 10th Street going northbound and Fox crossing MLK Jr. Avenue headed eastbound. But whether there was any significance of that crossing was not known.
Video from a house just west of where the shooting occurred showed Soto walking by while on the phone and, less than a minute later, a man in all black is seen running in the opposite direction.
Charles Frisco, Fox’s attorney, said that while Fox’s DNA was found on one of the casings at the scene, it didn’t prove he fired the gun and argued the gun could have been stolen prior to the shooting. Frisco said prosecutors had no video evidence, nor did they have the murder weapon and that there were others with motive, including an ex-boyfriend of the victim.
But Cole disagreed and said the evidence against Fox was overwhelming.
Fox was arrested in September on a weapons violation and was later tied by detectives to Soto’s killing and the non-injury shooting.