OT: Arrest made in Vegas shooting

[NeonNinja]

http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080418/SPORTS01/80418133

 

[bigdchi]

You almost gave me a heart attack.

 

[cowboyfan4life_mark]

Arrest made in Vegas case involving Pacman
Associated Press • April 18, 2008


LAS VEGAS — Police say they’ve arrested a suspect in the triple shooting at a Las Vegas strip club that led to the suspension of Titans cornerback Adam “Pacman” Jones.

Arvin Kenti Edwards was arrested late Friday in Washington. Police say he was already in custody in Yakima County Correctional facility on unrelated charges.

A statement released by Las Vegas police said Edwards faces three counts of attempted murder with a weapon and three counts of battery with substantial bodily harm.

Police say Edwards, 29, of Renton, Wash., is in custody awaiting extradition.
A bouncer was paralyzed in the February 2007 shooting at the Minxx gentlemen’s club. Jones pleaded no contest to a disorderly conduct charge.

 

[cowboyfan4life_mark]

Police make arrest in Vegas strip club shooting
By KATHLEEN HENNESSEY, Associated Press Writer
24 minutes ago

Buzz Up PrintLAS VEGAS (AP)—A Washington man was arrested Friday in the triple shooting at a Las Vegas strip club that led to the suspension of NFL cornerback Adam “Pacman” Jones.

Las Vegas police said Arvin Kenti Edwards was arrested late Friday at the Yakima County Correctional facility, where he was already in custody on unrelated charges.

Police said Edwards, 29, of Renton, Wash., faces three counts of attempted murder with a weapon and three counts of battery with substantial bodily harm.

Las Vegas police spokesman Bill Cassell wouldn’t provide further details.

Club bouncer Tommy Urbanski was paralyzed from the waist down in the February 2007 shooting at the Minxx strip club.

Las Vegas police said Jones incited a fight that led to the shooting. The 24-year-old suspended Tennessee Titans star pleaded no contest in December to a disorderly conduct charge, agreeing to a year probation, random drug testing, community service and anger management classes.

Two co-defendants also took plea deals.

Witnesses told authorities that Jones grabbed money from a large plastic trash bag and showered strippers on stage with cash in an act known as “making it rain.” A melee ensued, and shots were fired later outside the club. Urbanski, another bouncer and a female patron were wounded.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell suspended Jones last April for the 2007 season for his off-field conduct. The sixth pick in the 2005 draft has been arrested six times since being drafted.

 

[FuzzyLumpkins]

So this guy is from Washington?

 

[marchetta]

You almost gave me a heart attack.

That title had me racing in here expecting the worst. Maybe you should consider changing that thread title. It's just a little too Faux News-ish.

 

[Seven]

Gee............wonder why he waited to request for reinstatement?

 

[FuzzyLumpkins]

Gee............wonder why he waited to request for reinstatement?

Yakima County is in Washington state. Pacman is from Atlanta, Nashville and Morganstown.

I am kinda confused why you'd say this.

 

[Seven]

Yakima County is in Washington state. Pacman is from Atlanta, Nashville and Morganstown.

I am kinda confused why you'd say this.

He doesn't have a car? Access to a commercial flight? Bus tokens?

Coincendental they "finally" arrest the gunman/shooter in this case?

Just too convenient, IMO Fuzzy.

 

[Kevinicus]

I'm a little uninformed of the details of this case. So Jones was guilty of disorderly conduct because he gave money to strippers at a strip club? Isn't that what you're supposed to do? How would that be the cause of a fight?

 

[FuzzyLumpkins]

He doesn't have a car? Access to a commercial flight? Bus tokens?

Coincendental they "finally" arrest the gunman/shooter in this case?

Just too convenient, IMO Fuzzy.

Thats quite a stretch.

I would say he refused to apply because the commissioner told him not to and because it takes all the leverage away from the Titans.

If he was somehow involved with this guy he wouldnt be given information saying the cops were onto him. Quite frankly unless he was from a place Pacman was from it makes sense to thinkt he two are not related instead of the other.

 

[silverbear]

I'm a little uninformed of the details of this case. So Jones was guilty of disorderly conduct because he gave money to strippers at a strip club? Isn't that what you're supposed to do? How would that be the cause of a fight?

My understanding is that PacMan got enraged when the girls started scooping up the money, apparently he didn't intend for them to KEEP any of it... at one point, he reportedly got physical with one of the dancers, which is what tipped off the brawl, that led to the shootings outside the club...

You do know that he pled guilty to charges stemming from instigating that fight, don't you?? This is pretty compelling evidence that he was in the middle of the whole sordid fiasco...

 

[burmafrd]

The real key is the thug a friend or even known to our would be thug?
If that is proven, then it makes Pacman look a LOT worse.

 

[speedkilz88]

I stumbled upon an article from 3/28/07(old) that gives one of the best accounts from the police of what happened. Some of it lines up with what Jones said in the Irvin interview about the club owner taking his Louis Vuitton bag that had $81,000 in it from when he was gambling at the casino.

http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2007/Mar-27-Tue-2007/news/13413901.html

STRIP CLUB SHOOTING: Police to DA: Charge Jones

'Was he an inciter? Yes, he was,' official says of NFL player

CORRECTION -- 03/28/07 -- The age of Sadia Morrison, a woman arrested in connection with the Feb. 19 fight at Minxx topless club, was incorrect in Tuesday's editions. Morrison is 25.

By DAVID KIHARA
REVIEW-JOURNAL

Las Vegas police are recommending that NFL player Adam "Pacman" Jones be charged with one felony and two misdemeanors in connection with a February melee at a topless club that ended in a shooting.


Jones, a Tennessee Titans cornerback, and members of his entourage had been ejected from the Minxx strip club just minutes before multiple shots were fired in the parking lot, wounding three, including a bouncer paralyzed from the waist down.


The shooting just before dawn on Feb. 19 was cited by authorities as the worst violence associated with Las Vegas' hosting of the National Basketball Association All-Star Game.

Police said Monday that detectives haven't determined who fired the shots. While they continue to investigate that aspect of the case, they are recommending to the district attorney that Jones and two others be charged in relation to the fight that preceded the gunfire.

"This is just the beginning. These are small steps we are taking," Las Vegas police Lt. George Castro said.

Police are recommending Jones face misdemeanor battery, misdemeanor threats to life and felony coercion charges, Castro said.

The fight broke out after Cornelius Haynes Jr., better known as the rapper Nelly, tossed hundreds of dollars of Jones' money onto the stage for visual effect, police said. When strippers began taking the money, Jones "became irate" and got into a fight with the bouncers, police said.

Castro said the felony coercion charge is for punching one of the bouncers, which prevented that bouncer from "protecting citizens, employees and the property."

"He (Jones) was there committing the misdemeanor battery as well as the threats to life and coercion which we have witnesses of," Castro said.

Castro characterized Jones as an instigator of the scuffle inside the club that led to the shooting outside. "Was he an inciter? Yes, he was," Castro said.

Police are also recommending that two friends of Jones, 37-year-old Robert Reid and 24-year-old Sadia Morrison, face similar charges in connection with the fight. Reid, a resident of Carson, Calif., should be charged with misdemeanor battery and one felony count of coercion, and Morrison, a New York resident, should be charged with one felony count of coercion in addition to the felony battery with a deadly weapon charge she was already facing, police said. Police booked Morrison into the Clark County jail on the day of the shooting for the felony battery charge.

District Attorney David Roger said Monday afternoon that his office hadn't yet received the case from police and therefore couldn't comment on whether the charges that police are recommending will be filed against Jones and the others. "It's premature to pass judgment on the merits of the case," he said.

Jones' lawyer, Worrick Robinson, declined to comment on the police recommendations Monday afternoon. "We're still gathering our own information from the (police) press conference," Robinson said by telephone from Nashville, Tenn.

Reid couldn't be reached for comment.

Morrison's attorney, Robert Langford, questioned how Morrison could have posed a threat to a bouncer inside the club. Police previously said that Morrison hit Minxx security guard Adam Cudworth over the head with a champagne bottle.

"Was she beating up on a bouncer? How many women can go toe to toe with a bouncer in this town?" he said.

Morrison, who lives in New York, is becoming the victim of all the negative publicity surrounding the case, her lawyer said.

"It sounds to me like it's a situation that got out of hand," Langford said. "My client is probably going to be sucked into the vortex of the high profile nature of the case. And that's pretty sad."

The saddest aspect of the incident, however, is the condition in which 43-year-old Minxx security guard Tom Urbanski was left, his friends and relatives say. Urbanski is a paraplegic as a result of the multiple gunshot wounds he suffered, and he has had to endure a series of medical complications, including infections in a lung. He was a patient at University Medical Center for 30 days before being transferred last week to a rehabilitation hospital in Englewood, Colo. to undergo more treatment.

His wife, Kathy Urbanski, who had complained earlier this month that authorities had yet to charge anyone in the case, said Monday that she was "very happy to hear" about the police recommendations.

"We're absolutely thrilled," she said.

Matthew Dushoff, an attorney representing the Urbanskis, said the family felt vindicated that the police were recommending that charges be filed in connection with the fight but they still want the person responsible for shooting Urbanski to be arrested.

Lawyers for Jones have denied Minxx club co-owner Robert Susnar's account that Jones arrived and left the club with the shooter. After 500 hours of reviewing videotapes and interviewing witnesses from the club, Castro said police were unable to establish a relationship between Jones and the gunman.

Susnar has said the shooting happened after Jones threatened to kill a bouncer who intervened when Jones allegedly attacked a dancer who grabbed money on the stage.

Police later reported confiscating $81,000 in cash belonging to Jones. The money was recovered from the hotel room of Houston-based promoter Chris Mitchell, whose "Harlem Knights" dancers were brought in for the weekend at Minxx, a club several blocks west of the Strip on Wynn Road, near Tropicana Avenue.

Mitchell allegedly told the dancers to pick up the money that Haynes had thrown onto the stage. When the fight broke out at the club, Mitchell took a bag of cash that belonged to Jones, according to a police report. He later told police he thought the money was for the dancers.

One of Jones' lawyers, Manny Arora of Atlanta, told ESPN News that Jones was most concerned about the reaction of the league to charges that have not yet been filed.

"He's reacting like anybody would. He's obviously very upset about it," Arora said. "He's got enough issues with the NFL threatening to take disciplinary action. Then, you throw this on top of it."

He said he was most concerned that a new player conduct policy currently being discussed by NFL owners would retroactively punish Jones.

"Our biggest concern is what the NFL is going to do, then we'll deal with an arrest if there is one in the future," Arora said.

The NFL confirmed last month that officials were reviewing Jones' off-field conduct, which has included 10 incidents where he was interviewed by police.

Jones was not welcome to take part in the offseason conditioning program of the Tennessee Titans, which began last week.

The Titans are trying to decide whether to keep Jones, the sixth pick overall in 2005. The cornerback did not tell team officials about being arrested twice in Georgia in 2006, a potential violation of the personal conduct policy.

In January, a Tennessee judge ordered Jones to stay out of trouble until July 5, 2007, to have public intoxication and disorderly conduct charges from an August 2006 arrest in the Nashville suburb of Murfreesboro, Tenn., expunged.

Jones also has charges pending from a February 2006 Georgia case, in which he's accused of biting a Fayetteville police officer between his thumb and index finger. Jones was charged with felony obstruction of police. On March 13, a Georgia judge delayed a court appearance in that case to give Jones' attorneys time to determine how the NFL might react to a potential plea agreement.

In a statement released Monday, Titans officials said they were "deeply disturbed that the alleged conduct of one of its players has resulted in felony charges in one state and accusations of felony charges in another state."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Here's another with a little more details

[FONT=verdana,arial] Warrant includes details of club melee, shootings [/FONT]

[FONT=verdana, arial] By FRANCIS McCABE
REVIEW-JOURNAL [/FONT] [FONT=Verdana, Arial]
Adam "Pacman" Jones
Police believe cash belonged to Tennessee Titans cornerback

[/FONT] A topless dancer promoter took a trash bag full of NFL player Adam "Pacman" Jones' cash and fled the Minxx strip club early Monday, leading to a brawl and shooting that injured three people, one critically, according to a search warrant obtained Wednesday by the Review-Journal.

The search warrant, issued Monday in District Court, was for Chris Mitchell's room at the Silverton casino and hotel. Mitchell, who has been interviewed by police, had promoted a four-day event at Minxx for the NBA All-Star weekend. He had brought in dancers from his Houston-based strip club, Harlem Knights, to perform at the 4636 Wynn Road venue, near Tropicana Avenue and Valley View Boulevard.


Las Vegas police recovered more than $81,000 in cash from Mitchell's room that investigators believe belonged to Jones, a 23-year-old cornerback for the Tennessee Titans. They also recovered a brown cloth bag and two Breitling watches, but it was not clear who owned those items.

The search warrant also shed light on some missing details about what happened inside the strip club before the 5 a.m. shooting occurred.

Cornelius Haynes Jr., better known as the rapper Nelly, and rapper Jermaine Dupri, were also at the club and sitting with Jones's entourage in the VIP section, the warrant stated.

Haynes had tossed hundreds of $1 bills on the stripper stage, an action known in street slang as "making it rain," and Jones joined in.
An announcer told all the dancers to go to the center stage, and about 40 strippers soon were on the stage.
Mitchell told the strippers from his Houston club to pick up the money, which apparently was only supposed to be used for visual effect, the warrant stated.

One of the dancers than took the trash bag filled with Jones' money and a "melee broke out. Jones became irate about the loss of his money, and the fact that girls were in a frenzy, picking up the money at their feet," the warrant stated.
Mitchell took the bag of cash and left the club.

Inside was chaos.

A woman with Jones, Sadia Morrison, was soon fighting with a stripper. Bouncers rushed in.

"Jones became extremely irate, telling security to back off and 'don't touch his girls,' " the warrant stated.

Jones soon engaged the bouncers who were trying to break up the scuffle, according to the warrant. "Jones challenged security and reached behind his back as if he were retrieving a weapon there," the warrant stated.
The bouncers were able to move Jones out of the club and turned their attention to Morrison, who was biting security and screaming. "Sadia (Morrison) picked up a champagne bottle and hit one security guard, Aaron Cudworth, in the head with it," according to the warrant.

Morrison was soon tossed out of the club.

A few minutes later, outside the club, a man with a cornrow hairdo fired a semi-automatic handgun, striking Cudworth, security guard Tom Urbanski and a female customer.

No arrests have been made.

A Metropolitan Police Department source has said an associate of Jones might have been the triggerman. "We think the link is strong, but we haven't been able to verify it," the source said Tuesday.
During an interview with detectives, Mitchell said he took Jones' money because he thought it was for the dancers, according to the warrant.

Cudworth, who was shot in the chest and arm, was released from University Medical Center on Tuesday.

Urbanski remained at UMC in critical condition. He was expected to live, but a bullet severed his spine and paralyzed him below the waist, his father said.

Minxx co-owner Rob Susnar said Tuesday that Jones had come into the club with the shooter and was sitting with him.

Susnar said when one of the strippers started grabbing the money without Jones' permission, he got angry, grabbed her hair and slammed her head against the stage.

Susnar also accused Jones of threatening Cudworth's life as he tried to break up the fight. A melee ensued as Cudworth scuffled with Jones and members of his entourage, Susnar said.

Jones' lawyer, Worrick G. Robinson, on Wednesday reiterated that Jones disputes that account.
"I've tried to explain my understanding of what occurred. I think it really speaks for itself, and I don't have anything else to add," Robinson said. "We will let Metro continue with their investigation, and we anticipate their findings will be consistent with our investigation."

In the meantime, Jones has left Las Vegas, Robinson said.

Robinson has been in communication with the investigating detectives and said Jones will be available to police if they need him.
Detectives interviewed Jones on Monday about his time at Minxx.

Robinson said Jones is not a suspect in the shooting.



http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2007/Feb-22-Thu-2007/news/12741485.html

One more about his plea deal:

No jail for Jones in club melee

'Pacman' must testify against gunman

By DAVID KIHARA
REVIEW-JOURNAL
Adam "Pacman" Jones
Was in strip club with man who later shot three people



Adam "Pacman" Jones, second from right, stands behind his lawyer, Robert Langford, during an arraignment hearing Thursday at the Regional Justice Center. Jones and his co-defendants, Robert "Big Rob" Reid, right, and Sadia Morrison, left, all pleaded no contest to reduced charges in connection with a February melee at a strip club.
Photo by John Gurzinski.

It's now official: NFL player Adam "Pacman" Jones won't face jail time in connection with a brawl inside a Las Vegas Valley strip club.

At the Regional Justice Center downtown Thursday, the 24-year-old Tennessee Titans cornerback formally accepted a plea deal that gives him probation. In exchange, he must testify against the person who shot three people at the Minxx strip club immediately after the fight in the wee hours of Feb. 19, at the end of Las Vegas' NBA All-Star game weekend. One of the wounded, a bouncer, was left a quadriplegic.

Police said Jones had threatened the club's staff just before the shooting, and witnesses said Jones was seen inside the club with the man who fired the shots.

The gunman had not been arrested and charged for the shooting as of Thursday. Clark County District Attorney David Roger said this week that Jones had provided the authorities with some information about the shooter, but Roger said he couldn't elaborate because the shooting was still being investigated.



Jones pleaded no contest to one count of conspiracy to commit disorderly conduct, a gross misdemeanor.

Under the agreement, Jones will receive a one-year suspended sentence, must complete 200 hours of community service, submit to random drug testing and attend an anger management class.

The probation and community service requirements might be fulfilled near Jones' home in Tennessee, said his lawyer, Robert Langford. Jones already is subject to the NFL's drug testing program.

Authorities dropped two felony coercion charges against Jones in exchange for the guilty plea.
Jones, who is seeking reinstatement to the Titans, said little during the brief arraignment. He wore a black button-up shirt with white pinstripes that was not tucked into his pants.

As he walked into the crowded arraignment room in the basement of the courthouse, Jones doffed a blue Texas Rangers baseball cap, handed it off, and answered "Yes, sir," to Hearing Master Kevin Williams when Williams asked him if he understood the plea deal.
Jones stood in the arraignment room with his attorney.

When Williams asked Jones for his plea to the charges, he replied, "No contest, sir."

Jones' two co-defendants, Sadia Morrison, 25, of New York, and Jones' bodyguard, Robert "Big Rob" Reid, 37, of Carson, Calif., were arraigned alongside Jones and agreed to similar deals. The trio had been expected to enter pleas Wednesday, but the hearing was delayed a day because Reid missed his flight out of Los Angeles, Langford said.

Outside the courthouse Thursday, passers-by stared at the throngs of reporters and photographers circling Jones as he walked from the courthouse steps to a waiting car.

"What the hell?" asked Nathan Walley, who was walking away from the courthouse as Jones walked out. "It's just stupid."
A cameraman for the local ABC affiliate KTNV-TV, Channel 13, said Jones pushed him after accidentally walking into his camera. "It wasn't a big deal," said the cameraman, Jason Valle.

Jones' plea agreement enraged Tommy Urbanski and his wife, Kathy. The shooting left Tommy Urbanski paralyzed, and the couple has been living at a Residence Inn since Aug. 25 while their house is being renovated to make it handicapped accessible.
Urbanski, who has struggled through numerous surgeries, said that if he had a chance to speak to Jones, he wouldn't say anything, because if he did say something, "it would probably just be a bunch of curses."

The Urbanskis also are eager to see the person who fired the shots brought to justice.

"I want the guy who shot me," Urbanski said. "If he's (Jones) getting probation just because the district attorney wants to go light on him, I'll be pissed."

Authorities said Jones started the fight inside the strip club at 4636 Wynn Road, near Arville Street and Tropicana Avenue, after he threw hundreds of dollars onto the stage for a visual effect known as "making it rain." Jones "became irate" and got into a fight with bouncers in the club after strippers started taking the money, police said.

The shooting occurred near the front of the club after Jones and his entourage had been kicked out.

Jones has been arrested six times since the Titans drafted him in April 2005 from West Virginia and has other criminal cases pending.

A felony count of obstruction in Georgia from a February 2006 arrest has been postponed, and August 2006 public intoxication and disorderly charges in Tennessee were delayed pending the outcome of the Las Vegas case.

In April, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell suspended Jones for the season for violating the NFL's personal conduct policy. Goodell upheld the suspension after he met with Jones in early November.

The Urbanskis have filed a civil suit against Jones seeking damages. So have the other two people wounded by gunfire in the shooting, Minxx bouncer Aaron Cudworth and patron Natalie Jones.

"He's (Jones) come within inches of ruining both our lives," Kathy Urbanski said. "I would never say he ruined our lives because I don't want to give him that much power."
The Associated Press contributed to this report. Contact reporter David Kihara at dkihara@reviewjournal.com

http://www.lvrj.com/news/12243531.html

 

[Chocolate Lab]

Ugh.

Does anyone else wish Pacman would just get spotted sticking his head in a strip club so Goodell could extend his ban? Then we wouldn't get him and we wouldn't have to worry about anyone else getting him, either.

 

[notherbob]

Pacman is just like any other criminal on his way to prison only he's taking the scenic route. The big question is whether someone will gun him down before he gets to his destination. I won't feel any sorrier for him than I do the thousands of others who make the same decisions.

The only thing I will feel a twinge of regret over is the wasted potential. A criminal idiot is still an idiot...and still a criminal.

I hope he turns his life around but his kind seldom do. It's his choice and no one can take it away from him.

 

[skinsscalper]

Pacman is just like any other criminal on his way to prison only he's taking the scenic route. The big question is whether someone will gun him down before he gets to his destination. I won't feel any sorrier for him than I do the thousands of others who make the same decisions.

The only thing I will feel a twinge of regret over is the wasted potential. A criminal idiot is still an idiot...and still a criminal.

I hope he turns his life around but his kind seldom do. It's his choice and no one can take it away from him.

I don't feel sorry for him, either, nb. I do hope that he turns his life around though. If for nothing more than the sake of his daughter.

 

[CrazyCowboy]

good....maybe this will clean things up a little

 

[FuzzyLumpkins]

You guys are unbelievable. News comes out that the shooter gets caught and the man is from Washington state and somehow this gets morphed into Jones being even worse for some of you.

and burm of all people actually understands the situation with levity which is unfrigginbelievable.

 

[Seven]

You guys are unbelievable. News comes out that the shooter gets caught and the man is from Washington state and somehow this gets morphed into Jones being even worse for some of you.

and burm of all people actually understands the situation with levity which is unfrigginbelievable.

Just thinkin' out loud, Fuzzy. Would you rather we called?