By Roxanna Jarvis
SACRAMENTO – Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Donald J. Currier, ruling in the case of a man in possession of a shotgun with a possible vendetta, said last week that while there probably isn’t enough evidence for a jury to convict Toese Asiata for shooting his neighbor in the neck, there was enough in a preliminary hearing to find he should stand trial.
The story began July 5, 2019, when the alleged victim in the case was getting ready for work around 7 a.m. and heard what she believed to be firecrackers going off outside her apartment. Upon investigating, the victim saw her upstairs neighbor, Toese Asiata, in the parking lot directly behind her car, which had its windows broken.
When asking Asiata what he was doing with her car, he replied to the victim something along the lines of, “Don’t play [games].”
“Then she heard a couple [of] other shots and felt pain in her neck and [ran] back in her [bathroom], locked herself in, and called 9-1-1,” testified Deputy Cory Allmon with Sacramento County Sheriff Department’s CSI Unit. Allmon had collected a statement from the victim on the day of the incident.
The victim told Deputy Allmon that it felt like “[she was] in a dream.” Allmon noticed the purple impact point on the left side of her throat when speaking to her. “[It was] approximately two-inches above her collar bone…At the center impact, it was purple. About an inch around. It was red and raised, and three inches around that there was redness.” Fortunately, the injury was not bleeding, she testified.
Allmon believed the impact point ranged from 1/8 inch to 1/4 inch in size and the size of the injury was similar to BB or bird shotgun-style pellets.
Regarding her vehicle, the victim stated she saw that all her windows had been “shot out” and that the front windshield had two holes in it. According to Detective Richard Maxwell with the Sacramento 
Sheriff’s Department, the total damage to the victim’s vehicle approximated $6,122.
The victim believes Asiata was angry with her due to a prior incident in which she had “ratted him out” by calling the police on him for throwing a party in the parking lot.
Asiata is charged with a total of four counts, including assault with a firearm, discharging a firearm into an inhabited dwelling, and vandalizing property causing over $400 in damage.
Although believing she was hit by Asiata, the victim relayed over the phone to dispatch that she didn’t believe it was intentional. When asked by Asiata’s attorney Isaac Choy, Deputy Allmon agreed. “That’s what she had told dispatch when she had initially made the call to 9-1-1.”
Deputy District Attorney Brandon Jack tried to object to the question as speculation, but Judge Currier overruled it.
Neighbors in the area had heard gunshots and had seen Asiata with the shotgun in hand. One man, who lived in a duplex northwest of the apartment, said he was outside his house when he heard somebody yelling. “He said the yelling wasn’t directed at him and he went back into his house and heard two [bams] and did not see a gun or anyone shooting,” summarized Detective Maxwell.
The man heard Asiata yell, “F*** you! Bring your a**** out now, sons of b******.”
Another woman, who lives in the apartment complex, saw an “Asian man” shoot a gun, but shooting toward the street and not at the apartment. Asiata is not Asian, but Samoan.
In a search of Asiata’s apartment, 37 rounds of 12-gauge shotgun shells were found in a bedroom, along with two rounds inside a drawer with mail and paperwork that had Asiata’s name on it.
In his concluding argument, Choy argued that not enough evidence existed to hold Asiata to answer for the assault charge. Choy argued, “The main complaining witness in this case did not see him shooting the shotgun at her, nor did she see him pointing a weapon at her.”
Regarding the charge of shooting into an inhabited home, Choy stated that while witnesses saw Asiata with a gun, none saw him shoot at the house. “Whether any buckshot, or any kind of BB shot this was, hit the house does not seem like it was intentionally in there. It was probably some sort of ricochet.”
DDA Jack believed otherwise, stating that Asiata was the only individual who was standing in front of her when she heard the gunshots and felt the gunshot hit her.
In addition, Jack asserted that witnesses identified Asiata in one way or another, whether it be a line-up or describing what he looked and what car he drove. “I think for purposes of preliminary hearing, there is certainly enough evidence to hold the defendant to answer on all charges.”
Judge Currier agreed with Jack and found sufficient cause that Asiata could be guilty, but said that it would take much more to convict Asiata during a jury trial. Asiata’s arraignment will be held later in November.
“There are a number of holes that will need to be plugged before trial if this case is to continue,” Judge Currier concluded.
Roxanna Jarvis is a fourth-year student at UC Berkeley, currently majoring in political science with a minor in public policy. She is from Sacramento, California.
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