'SNITCHING' INCITED SHOTS, MAN TESTIFIES

Richmond: Drug Dealer Was Taking Revenge For Student Telling Other
Dealers About His Actions, Says Man Facing Charges

A drug dealer who shot and killed two students at point-blank range
in 2003 in Richmond did it out of revenge, testified Kimiko Wilson,
who is on trial for the slayings.

"(Uichema Okeigwe) was snitching on him to other drug dealers that
he was selling in central Richmond," Wilson said.

Wilson, 22, testified Wednesday on his own behalf for the second day
in Superior Court in Martinez, saying he is not guilty of the June
16 shooting that killed 22-year-old Okeigwe, a student at Diablo
Valley College, and 16-year-old Erica Young, who attended Mt. Diablo
High School in Concord. Sheianna Babcock, 31, was wounded.

Prosecutors have charged Wilson with two counts of murder and one
count of attempted murder.

From the witness stand, Wilson spoke in an informal tone, swearing
more than 60 times in two hours. He described being at the scene at
the moment of the slayings, the real killer's confession and the
prohibition against helping police solve a crime.

Wilson sold marijuana on the streets and testified that a drug
dealer who tries to sell on the turf of another drug dealer gets in
big trouble.

That is what 27-year-old Marcus Rauls was doing, and Okeigwe told
other drug dealers about it, Wilson testified.

"One of the main laws of the streets, or whatever the (expletive)
you want to call it, is that you don't sell drugs outside your
territory," he testified.

Rauls was convicted of murder as a juvenile and had been
incarcerated at the California Youth Authority until he was 25, about
two years before the Richmond slayings. He was shot dead 10 months
after the killings that Wilson is charged with.

Wilson described the day of June 16, when he and his friend,
Okeigwe, planned to meet Rauls, who regularly sold marijuana to
Wilson and Okeigwe at wholesale prices.

Okeigwe, Babcock and Young drove together from Babcock's home in
Concord and picked up Wilson at Wilson's grandmother's house in Richmond.

They went to the Triangle Court Family Housing Project parking lot,
the meeting point Wilson had arranged for them to meet with Rauls.
Wilson saw Rauls walk up to the other side of the car. He started
getting out to say hello. Suddenly he heard shots.

Wilson ran. He said he did not know who, if anyone, was shot.

"You don't stop to think about (expletive) like that," he testified.

Wilson testified that he learned that night or the next morning that
his friend, Okeigwe, was killed. He felt confused and scared but
decided to try to return to the routine of his life -- selling
marijuana on the street in front of his grandmother's house.

Rauls approached Wilson two days later and told him that the police
wanted Wilson and that he needed to leave town.

"He said, 'It would be better if you go up north. I got a place for
you up there,'" Wilson told jurors.

By then, Wilson said, he had assumed Rauls was the shooter, and he
considered himself one of Rauls's "loose ends" in the killings and
felt intimidated by him.

He and Rauls moved to McKinleyville in Humbolt County, Wilson said.

That's when he said Rauls explained his reasoning behind the
shootings. He did not inform police at his arrest one month later,
or anyone else, about Rauls for the next 10 months because that
would have been snitching, Wilson told jurors.

Growing up in Richmond, Wilson's friends and family shared a common
belief that no situation is appropriate to call the police with
information about a crime, he said.

His mother ingrained the rule in him at a young age, when he tattled
on his siblings, he said.

"She'd whup them for doing whatever they was doing," he testified.
"Then she'd whup me for telling on them."

On cross-examination, deputy district attorney Harold Jewett asked
why he did not call Okeigwe, who he said was a close friend, to
check on him after the shooting.

"I was confused," he said. "It's not my business. It's not something
I want to get involved in."

Phone records show that after the shooting, Wilson made five cell
phone calls in three minutes to the same number. He also had called
that number moments before Okeigwe picked him up.

He said he did not remember whom he called. He said recalling by
looking at the phone number is difficult because many of his
colleagues purchased temporary cell phones.

"Think about it," he said. "We're drug dealers."

Testimony continues this afternoon.