Flowers and a sign hang at a makeshift memorial for murder victim William Sims on Thursday, Dec. 1, 2016, in El Sobrante, Calif. Investigators said Sims, a 28-year-old African American musician, was targeted because of his race.
Minutes before he was found barely conscious lying in the street outside of an El Sobrante pool hall — the victim of what authorities called a hate-crime slaying — William Sims drank a beer inside.
Surveillance video from inside the Capri Club that captures the final moments of Sims’ life suggests that he was a bar regular, just the friendly, beloved musician described by friends and family.
His shirt untucked, Sims, who is black, can be seen walking through the Capri Club’s Dutch door in the early morning hours of Nov. 12 and shaking hands with a white man. He touched hands with two white women.
Leaning on the bar, he ordered a bottled beer.
“How much do I owe you?” Sims, 28, asked.
“Three and a quarter,” the white female bartender responded.
Sims rummaged a pocket, pulled out crumpled bills and change. Sims and the man he greeted inspected Sims’ light-colored shirt. Sims turned to go to the bathroom, but before he closed the door he said something to a person out of the frame. When he returned to stand at the bar, his shirt is neatly tucked into his dark pants.
Hip-hop music played, and Sims’ conversations were punctuated by his laugh. He high-fived another white person.
But minutes after he left the Capri Club, authorities have said, Sims was jumped, robbed, beaten and then shot steps from the bar’s driveway on Appian Way. His back pocket had been pulled out, and a bullet casing was found 3 feet from his head.
One of the suspects, Daniel Porter-Kelly, 31, is in jail charged with murder, robbery and a hate crime enhancement that could get him the death penalty. The other two suspects identified by authorities are Ray Simons, 32, of Hercules and Daniel Ortega, 31, of Novato. Both remain at large.
Sims deserves justice, and I won’t stop asking questions until it happens.
But Colin Cooper, a lawyer for Porter-Kelly, will ask a court Friday to set his client free. He sees nothing that implicates his client in the evidence turned over by investigators.
Here’s why: Surveillance video and a search warrant affidavit raise serious questions about whether Porter-Kelly was even present when Sims was fatally shot.
From the search warrant affidavit, a female witness said Sims was “met with hostility” and people in the bar were “being mean to him.” She told investigators that Sims was involved in an altercation with Ortega and other males behind the bar. She identified Porter-Kelly and Simons as the other males.
She told investigators she didn’t know where Porter-Kelly was at that time.
After the shooting, the affidavit says, she drove Ortega and Simons to the Antioch-Pittsburg area. She has not been arrested.
Another witness who spoke to investigators is Ortega’s mother, Renee Brown, who has been arrested on suspicion of interfering with the investigation. The affidavit shows that Brown told investigators that her son called her and said he had been in a fight and that Simons had shot a man.
On the night he died, Sims and a white male friend, who was also interviewed by detectives, hung out at Ed’s Place, a bar on San Pablo Dam Road that is about a mile from the Capri Club. They drove 20 miles to Concord to sing karaoke at the Captain’s Chest Cocktail Lounge before returning to Ed’s Place.
“The surveillance inside the Capri Club shows the exact opposite,” Cooper said.
As Sims told the bartender goodnight, he slid his left hand into his pants pocket as he headed for the Dutch door. Another white man, also walking out, said something to Sims, who doesn’t break stride.
Car keys were found in the driver’s seat of Sims’ car and, to investigators, it appeared the vehicle had been rummaged through.
There were several Jack in the Box bags.
So far, authorities have not explained why they have deemed the case a hate crime. They also have not explained why Porter-Kelly is facing murder charges. The homicide, which occurred during a post-election wave of hate crime, is extremely troubling.
What led to Sims’ death? Was Sims targeted because of his race?
The public deserves a clear explanation from authorities about what went down.