The man whom King County Prosecutors say shot and killed two people during a melee in the parking lot outside the Sports Page Tavern in 2013 is set to stand trial on two charges of second-degree murder Aug. 16 at the Regional Justice Center in Kent.
Pending any new developments, such as the revelation of hitherto unknown witnesses or a plea deal, that is.
Cleanthony Jimerson, 31, pleaded not guilty to two counts of second-degree murder in March 2015 after he waived extradition and was brought back to King County from a Texas jail where he’d been held on other charges.
Prosecutors say Jimerson stood above Nicholas Greer, 24, and Lorenzo Duncan, 23 as they lay helpless on the ground and fired bullets into their heads and bodies, and that friends of the men then shot Jimerson.
Jimerson’s original trial had been set for June 18, 2015 at the RJC but has since been postponed several times.
At his first appearance, Jimerson, who was himself seriously wounded in the incidents outside of the tavern, appeared in a wheelchair.
Prosecuting Attorney Jessica Berliner said that at trial she expects to amend the charges to two counts of first-degree murder. Prosecutors have also charged Jimerson, a convicted felon at the time of the shootings, with one count of unlawful possession of a firearm.
Also killed in that early morning melee was Antuan Greer, 21. But according to the affidavit for determination of probable cause, the document in which Auburn Police lay out their case against Jimerson, a stray bullet, fired by an as-yet unknown person, probably killed Greer.
According to what witnesses told detectives, the argument that led to the fatal shootings started between two women on the tavern’s dance floor, one of them among the group that numbered Duncan, Lindsay and Greer.
The physical fight began outside in the parking lot, five minutes after closing, as about 100 patrons milled out and security got busy directing people to their cars to clear the lot.
Loud talk outside from one of the women involved in the previous argument led to a fistfight between men in the two groups, according to the affidavit. According to the affidavit, a few of the fighters went south of the parking lot and out onto Auburn Way North to fight and the rest began moving north through the parking lot, toward where the fatal shots were later fired.
Several witnesses told police that a woman first fired a warning shot into the air to break up the fight. Hearing that, a witness said, a man, perhaps believing that shots were being fired for real, ran to his car across the lot and grabbed a gun. An estimated 20-to-30 seconds after the warning shot, multiple individuals pulled out their handguns and began firing.
Although witness accounts of the fatal shootings vary widely, a number of witnesses identified or described Jimerson as the man who had shot and killed the two men.
