A Heroin Deal Gone Bad, Witness Testifies in Lloyd Hearing

A San Diego woman testified Wednesday that she partied on Barona Indian Reservation with Stanley Lloyd Jr. last fall and that Lloyd showed her a gun and talked about a drug deal gone wrong. She said he described how he shot "a kid" in the head and disposed of the body and car. He talked of other killings too and how he runs Barona, the woman told the court.

The party was two or three nights after Christopher Carioscia, a 17-year-old El Capitan High School student, disappeared. The last reported sighting of him was around midnight outside Barona Casino on Oct. 26, 2010. The Santee teenager had told his mother he'd gone to see friends on the reservation. She never heard from him again. His mother's burned out car, which he'd been driving, was found on the reservation the next day and .

Nineteen-year-old Lloyd was arrested at his Lakeside home on the reservation in March and charged with first degree murder.

At his preliminary hearing Wednesday, Kimberly Dewhurst said she and her girlfriend hung out with Lloyd and his friends at some fire pits on the reservation two or three nights before Halloween. Lloyd pulled a gun out from under his shirt and she confronted him, she told the court.

She testified that Lloyd told her, "I carry a gun with me everywhere I go. I run things here on Barona."

Dewhurst said Lloyd told her the gun had been used to shoot three or four people.

She recalled hearing Lloyd talking to another man about how he had just killed a kid and "tossed his body up the road and burned his car."

Under cross examination, she recalled her statement to a detective in which she said that Lloyd had told her he'd shot a kid in the head over a drug deal gone wrong — "a bad heroin deal"— and that he'd buried the victim.

When tribal security showed up at the fire pits the night of the party, Lloyd went over to talk to them, Dewhurst said. The officer drove away. Dewhurst said she asked Lloyd if security was going to do anything about all the friends drinking around the fire pits.

"No, they don't do anything 'cause I run things up here," Dewhurst said he told her.

Dewhurst said Lloyd offered the gun around for people at the fire pits to handle. She said she asked to shoot the pistol because she'd never shot a gun before. Lloyd held her hands on the gun and helped her shoot it, she told the court.

She said Lloyd also had a plastic sandwich bag that contained bullets. He threw the bag and the gun into the trees that night, she said.

On cross examination by defense attorney Roland Haddad, Dewhurst said she was drunk at the fire pit gathering but said she could remember what was said.

Deputy District Attorney David Williams III called Lloyd's cousin Tommy Lachappa as a "semi-reluctant witness." Lachappa, 16, said he'd also gone to the fire pits and he recalled Lloyd had a gun there. He said there were rumors on the reservation that Lloyd had killed Christopher and that Lloyd said that night, "No one can pin it on me just because I was the last one to see him."

Sheriff's staff and a member of Barona Tribal Enforcement also took the stand Wednesday. Some of the tribal members answered a lot of prosecution questions with, "I don't remember." At one point, Williams told one young man, "You were able to remember some detail there," after he'd been cross-examined by the defense. "Everything I asked you, you said you couldn't remember."

"I don't know," the young man answered.

Haddad asked the tribal officer one question: "Does this guy next to me (looking at Lloyd) run the reservation?"

"I don't think so," the officer said with a smile.

No cameras are allowed in the court during the preliminary hearing. The hearing continues Thursday in Dept. 16 at the El Cajon courthouse. Judge John M. Thompson will decide if there's enough evidence for the case to go to trial.

Lloyd appeared relaxed throughout the hearing. If the case does go to trial and Lloyd is convicted, he faces 50 years to life in prison.