Venice Beach Hotel owner gets away with racist murder

Tweet

This post is a followup to the post we made 31 August, 2015:

Venice Beach hotel owner arrested for ordering racist murder of homeless man

Shakespeare

Jascent Jamal Lee Warren, 26, a homeless activist known as “Shakespeare” to his friends, lay dead and another black man injured, after a security guard for a Venice Beach hotel acted on orders from the hotel owner to "Kill that nigger" and started firing at a group of homeless people sleeping on the sidewalk early Sunday morning. While the man that did the shooting fled and is still at large, LAPD has announced that they have arrested another man associated with the murder, but have not said who he is. I have it on good information he it is Sris Sinnathamby, the owner of the Cadillac Hotel and the man witnesses say ordered this racist murder. The police are holding him on suspicion of murder for $1 million bond. That may sound like a lot but this man can easily afford it and the charge is murder. More ...

That post included a 13 minute video report done by Venice activist Tony Vera that very night. Five minutes is spent interviewing John Rasta White Lion only hours after the killing. He was one of a number of witnesses in this case and he was close enough to the shooting to have a gun pointed at him by the shooter and to have Shakespeare's blood on his shirt. 2:16 into his interview he says:

Mexicans and black people, we need to get along. You know, right before he killed my brother, that man said "kill that nigger, killed that nigger." That's what the guy that owns this building right here [pointing] told the security guy "kill that nigger." He didn't have to go to that level. Everything could have been everything. We could have walked away from this situation. Everything was everything. Next thing you know he pulled a strap on him and he bust on him. Next thing you know my brother's laying over there on the concrete dead. I called the fucking police. Takes police 20 minutes to get here, and the god damn police station's on the thing [beach], but and yet when I make my fucking tent, it takes them 10 muthafucka minutes to get my in my fucking tent and say "Hey Rastafarian, haul your fucking ras." The man's leaking. The man's leaking on the god damn concrete right there and the police station is less than 3,000 yards away, however far that is. It's right there, it's right fuckin there. This shit disrespect dawg.

We ended that post by saying:

The alleged killer and hotel owner, Sris Sinnathamby, is a big contributor to Los Angeles City politicians. It will be interesting to see how this case is handled in that light.

Now we have the sad duty to tell you that the judge has dismissed murder charges against the owner of the Cadillac Hotel. On 8 June, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Elden Fox granted a defense motion that argued that there wasn't enough evidence that Cadillac Hotel owner Sris Sinnathamby ordered the murder. In an email to a local paper, Alan Jackson, the hotel owner's attorney, explained the outcome this way:

“To use the judge’s words, in order to hold Mr. Sinnathamby to answer, he would have to believe the prosecution’s witnesses that claimed to hear the statement ‘Shoot that n*****.’ The court stated, ‘I simply don’t believe them,’”

The judge held that the witnesses where all bias against Sinnathamby because many of them were among a group of men that attacked him right after the shooting, and because some had a civil suit against him. The were also young, homeless and minorities. In any case, the judge didn't find their testimony credible when weighed against the denials of a well connected multi-millionaire. End of Story.

The shooter is still awaiting trial in county on $3 million bail but his former boss is back to opening new businesses in the rapidly gentrified Venice.