![\"Murder](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/SAC_3913_KStreetShooting_HA_260421.JPG\" "\\"Murder")
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Murder suspect Mtula Payton listens to opening statement during the K Street mass shooting trial at the Tani Cantil-Sakauye Sacramento Courthouse on Tuesday, April 21, 2026.<\/p>\n
HECTOR AMEZCUA<\/p>\n
hamezcua@sacbee.com<\/p>\n
Witnesses to the downtown Sacramento mass shooting<\/a> that left six dead and more than a dozen wounded as nightclubs closed on K Street sensed trouble in the moments before the shots were fired.<\/p>\n Jurors at the murder trial for Mtula Payton and Dandrae Martin, the surviving suspects in the April 2022 massacre, continued hearing testimony Friday in Sacramento Superior Court, blocks from the scene of the deadliest mass shooting in the city\u2019s history.<\/p>\n On the witness stand, Sacramento police Det. Shaun McGovern described a hospital interview conducted two days after the April 3 shooting with one of the wounded. The man recalled from his bed at UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento an encounter with the man later identified as Smiley Martin \u2014 the third suspect in the closing-time shootings.<\/p>\n Martin died in 2024 at Sacramento County Main Jail as he awaited trial in the case.<\/p>\n The witness was walking back from a nearby parking garage to London Club on K Street in the minutes before the shots were fired when he encountered Martin on 10th Street.<\/p>\n \u201cHe asked where I was from and what was I looking at?\u201d \u2014 questions, the witness said, were intended to determine whether he was affiliated with a gang. He wasn\u2019t, but knew to leave.<\/p>\n Then he saw a weapon, he told McGovern in a video interview played for jurors.<\/p>\n \u201cI saw the gun he had. I said, \u2018I\u2019m from the north. I don\u2019t bang,\u2019\u201d the witness said on the video. Martin, clutching a gun in his left hand, pulled the weapon behind his left leg.<\/p>\n \u201cI turn around, take a step, and, gunshots,\u201d the witness said.<\/p>\n He was struck in the leg, the round shattering his femur, he told the investigator. He lay on the sidewalk struggling to breathe. Next to him lay Sergio Harris, 38, and 21-year-old Johntaya Alexander, a bystander.<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s down, Sergio\u2019s down, I\u2019m down,\u201d the witness said.<\/p>\n Harris and Alexander were two of the six killed in what Sacramento County prosecutors argue was a gun battle between gang rivals.<\/p>\n Bystanders Yamile Martinez, 21; Alexander, and Melinda Davis, 57, died in the shootings.<\/p>\n Joshua Hoye-Lucchessi, 32; Harris; and Devazia Turner, 29, were involved in the shootout, Sacramento County prosecutors said.<\/p>\n Attorneys for Payton and Martin say their clients were fired upon in a spontaneous burst of violence and shot back in self-defense.<\/a><\/p>\n Jurors on Thursday and again on Friday watched security camera footage from various K Street locations showing the Martin brothers, Hoye-Lucchesi and others making their way along K Street in the hour before the shooting.<\/p>\n A witness in a May 2022 telephone interview with McGovern played Thursday for jurors said the group was not dressed for the nightclub. Instead, they wore hooded sweatshirts.<\/p>\n \u201cYou feel a bad situation. You feel the tension. It felt uncomfortable. My homies felt uncomfortable,\u201d the witness told McGovern on the May 2022 telephone call. \u201cIf you\u2019re not trying to get into the club, what are you trying to do? (Expletive) were trying to kill people where we were just having fun.\u201d<\/p>\n The witness and his girlfriend left K Street before the violence but told McGovern he recognized Hoye-Lucchesi from a television news report.<\/p>\n \u201cI saw him on TV,\u201d the witness told McGovern during the May 2022 telephone call. \u201c\u2019The first thing I said was, \u2018It\u2019s that (expletive) fault. It\u2019s that guy\u2019s fault.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n On Friday, jurors watched as the witness recovering from his wounds at UC Davis Medical Center recalled his own suspicions of the group and his futile attempt to flee the gunfire.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a group who just wants to stand around and talk to females. Then, there\u2019s a group who wants to stand around and fight. They looked like a mix of both,\u201d the witness told McGovern.<\/p>\n After his run-in with the man on 10th Street, \u201cI\u2019m trying to walk away as fast as I can,\u201d he said. \u201cI step away and, gunshots.\u201d<\/p>\n Related Stories from Sacramento Bee<\/p>\n