Failing memories in Sacramento mass shooting case have prosecution relying on video

A nightclub patron who was shot twice in the back during the downtown Sacramento mass shooting two years ago but survived testified Thursday that he could not recall who shot him that night.

But in a video-recorded interview he gave police two days after the April 3, 2022, gang shootout, Oshe White named brothers Smiley and Dandrae Martin as two men who confronted him as he was walking near 10th and K streets just before the shooting began.

White, 28, said on the video that, as he was walking north on 10th Street toward K Street, a man in a white shirt was behind him and another man wearing a sweater with the word “Backwoods” on it asked where he was going.

“Dude stopped me,” White told police in the April 5, 2022, hospital interview as he described being asked where he was going and noticed the man holding a gun behind his left leg.

“Where you from?” White recalled the man asking him.

“I’m from up north, but I don’t bang,” White answered, meaning he is from North Sacramento but had no history with gangs.

“I turn around, take that step, gunshots ...” White said on the video. “As soon as I made it off the curb I just felt myself getting hit.”

White’s recollection two years ago stood in stark contrast to Thursday, when he repeatedly told prosecutor Brad Ng in Sacramento Superior Court that he could not recall any details of that Saturday night, especially who shot him.

With White sitting on the witness stand before Judge Maryanne Gilliard as the Martin brothers and co-defendant Mtula Payton watched from the defense table, Ng asked if he could recall who the men in the Backwoods sweater and white shirt were.

“No,” White said, one of at least 24 instances in which he told Ng he could not remember details from that night, including when he got downtown, whether he left the London nightclub when it closed, what he did once he got outside or whether he stopped at a small hot dog cart near 10th and K, as video from downtown cameras show.

White cannot be described as a willing witness. He has been held at the Sacramento County Main Jail since last week because he refused to come to court for the preliminary hearing into the shooting.

He was brought to court from jail Thursday morning and immediately invoked his Fifth Amendment rights against testifying. This led to Gilliard agreeing to give him immunity that guaranteed he could not be charged for anything he revealed in his testimony unless it was untrue.

Even then, White, the second witness granted immunity this week after declining to testify in a case involving Sacramento’s gang culture, had little to offer.

He recalled being shot twice in the back, with one round lodging near his spine, but even after he was asked if he saw himself in the video being played in court of his hospital interview, White answered, “I do not recall.”

“Does it matter what question I ask about this evening?” Ng continued. “Are you going to answer, ‘I do not recall?’”

White answered that he had been through too much trauma to recall details of the shootout and that he was working four jobs in an attempt to forget.

“There’s a lot I do not remember, sir,” he said. “But I am not sitting here lying or trying to bulls--- you. ... I’ve been trying to be in a positive mindset.

“I’m just happy to be today alive, walking, smiling. I’m happy to be in the mindset that I am, and I try everything to not revisit this. I’ve used these years to flush all this out and forget.”

Ng noted that White had been arrested as a material witness in the case, then asked if it was true he did not want to testify.

“I didn’t want to, but I had no choice,” White said. “I’m pretty sure no one would want to be here, especially with what I went through.”

White’s memory loss was so acute that at one point Dandrae Martin’s attorney, Linda Parisi, objected to a question from Ng as leading the witness.

“Overruled, this witness cannot be led,” the judge said, eliciting giggles from the courtroom audience.

That left Ng to play snippets from the hospital room video and ask White about what he said during that session with detectives, when he named both Smiley and Dandrae Martin during questioning about the two men who confronted him.

White said in court he didn’t remember that, and on the video White said some of his knowledge about the shooting came from news accounts and videos he had watched.

On the video, he said he recalled the moment after being hit by gunfire.

“Next thing you know, I was on the ground,” he said. “I was holding this leg.

“I was in the street right behind this car and then, when they kept shooting, I turned this way on my stomach, and when I turned this way I saw a body drop. ... All I remember is just hearing hella gunshots, hella people standing up still, which I didn’t get.”

White’s testimony came after two days of testimony from Ike Harris, the cousin of shooting victim Sergio Harris, one of six people killed that night.

Ike Harris, who also was testifying under a grant of immunity, was questioned repeatedly by defense attorneys over whether he saw Sergio Harris with a gun, something he denied.

Defense lawyers are trying to show Sergio Harris may have opened fire that night as two rival gang groups squared off, but Ike Harris insisted he never saw anything like that.

White also testified that he did not know whether Sergio Harris had a gun, and on video said the same thing.

“The only guy I knew had a gun was Backwoods guy,” White said on the video.

And, when Ng asked White in court who had shot him, White had a ready answer.

“I do not know” he said. “My back was turned. I had bullets in the back of me.”

White had been scheduled to resume his testimony Thursday afternoon, but that was postponed after the judge announced that a legal issue had come up.

White, who is being held in the same jail as the Martin brothers and Payton, is now scheduled to resume testimony Monday.

This story was originally published April 4, 2024 at 1:47 PM.