Alleged strip club gunman sees friends testify in court, sort of

FORT WAYNE, Ind. ---Much has been made of a brief conversation that took place on surveillance video between Breshawn Smith and Issac Green at Showgirl 1 Nov. 16 last year.

The state says the conversation at 2:50 a.m. had such an effect on Smith that he immediately caught up with his two companions - Dillon Vachon and William Tolbert -  with an urgent message.

Tolbert reinforced that.

“We gotta go,” Smith told the two and they went, according to Tolbert’s testimony on the stand.

Breshawn Smith

It was the prelude to a night of “carnage,” Chief Deputy Prosecutor Tom Chaille said Tuesday in his opening arguments in Allen Superior Court. On his return to the club, Smith is accused of firing a rifle at an innocent crowd standing outside the club just after closing, shooting to death Marialuz Margarita Munoz, 26, and wounding Taurean Hayden, a Green associate who is now deceased, and a Michigan man named Benjamin Crance.

Smith is charged with murder, two counts of attempted murder and criminal recklessness.

Chaille and detectives, including lead homicide detective Liza Anglin, carefully laid out the case with a lot of video surveillance. Smith, now 29, and his companions left in his girlfriend’s black Chevy Equinox only to return back to Showgirl 1 at 3:11 a.m.

Homicide detective Luke MacDonald and Detective Liza Anglin both worked the case.

City cameras on West Coliseum Boulevard and Goshen Road tracked the vehicle’s route to an Avondale Drive address, dropping off Dillon, and to a mobile home park off U.S. 27 before making its way back up Lafayette Street.

Anglin also made use of commercial cameras from Showgirl and the Rodeway Inn next door where Tolbert parked the car prior to the shooting. 

With crime scene detective Juana Saldana, jurors viewed photos of small yellow cards that marked the 20-plus .22 caliber shell casings picked up after the rampage. 

Photos were also taken of the four 9mm shell casings found at a diagonal and thought to have been return fire from one of the wounded men.

Prosecutors said Smith used a rifle; no one seems to know who owns the 9mm Glock found in the club’s dumpster 50 feet away from the scene. 

Extracting information from the surviving victim and Smith’s buddies hasn’t been easy. Green was on the stand yesterday and had no recall of the convo between him and Smith. He said he didn’t even know Smith.

Vachon, the brother of Smith’s “babymama,” Kayla Vachon who got dropped off at his father’s home on Avondale testified he was unaware of any plan to go back to the club and shoot people. Dillon Vachon said he didn’t know Issac Green.

Tolbert, who had way more to lose if he didn’t testify because he was charged with murder (acting in concert) and two counts of attempted murder, said he “seen the gun” when Smith got back into the Equinox from Vachon’s mobile home at the Country Court Estates, but didn’t see Smith use it.

“I didn’t know the caliber,” he testified in court. Tolbert said he did hear gunshots, but he didn’t see what went down because the car was parked at the Rodeway Inn.

But Anglin traced the car circling around the club, pointing out Smith in light colored jeans and a gray hoodie running away from the scene. The camera has him get out of the passenger side of the vehicle and then hop back in before they leave with the headlights turned off.

The rifle was never found, which isn’t unusual in homicide cases, especially in a city with three rivers. Tolbert is taking a plea deal which changed his charges into one charge of aggravated battery (acting in concert.) The felony level was not divulged in court.

But as miserable as the case looks for Breshawn Smith, the world turns on hope. His uncle, Marcus Craig, has another theory on the homicide case and says the evidence doesn’t add up.

“I’m still lost,” Craig said, who was there in court with Smith’s father and other family. “Every story is different. Where I’m sitting, all the evidence points to somebody else. That’s why people of color don’t trust the system.”

The prosecution doesn’t give the vehicle enough time to make the return run, Craig said. But what’s more puzzling to him is Benjamin Crance, the Michigan man who didn’t testify, but apparently told the cops that a Mexican man shot him.

In the probable cause affidavit, Smith described the strip club as busy at 1:15 a.m. when he got there and that he saw “six or seven dudes” there along with a group of Mexicans.

Craig recalled a street crimes detective on the stand saying that Crance told him he was shot by “a Mexican named Jeff.

“If I’m looking at someone, I know who shot me,” Craig said. Other testimony seemed to indicate the gun Smith had was “short” when a rifle is “long,” he said. 

Closing arguments are expected Friday.  Chaille and deputy prosecutor Rachel Gschwend will likely close as will Robert Scremin, Smith’s attorney.