Witness details moments before Santa Rosa slaying

A man who was slain at a southwest Santa Rosa residence for formerly homeless people had been in a drunken struggle with the man suspected of killing him in the moments before he was stabbed, a housemate testified Friday.

Khalil Rahim Keith, 35, is accused of stabbing Willie Ray Smith, 47, to death outside a Red Tail Street home Smith shared with several other people, early in the morning of May 11. He was arrested the same day Smith died, after police found him less than a mile away near Southwest Community Park, matching witness descriptions. He has pleaded not guilty.

The roommate, Charmayne Fasce, said during a lengthy examination at Friday’s preliminary hearing that she saw the two men involved in a physical altercation outside the home in the moments before the stabbing.

“I couldn’t tell exactly what was going on, but I could tell it was physical,” Fasce said, explaining that, at the time she heard the struggle, she had walked away from the residence to tell a friend who was sleeping in his car to move elsewhere. She said she suffers from night blindness so could not see in detail what was happening.

However, she said, it was clear there was some kind of struggle. “It was loud. It sounded aggressive.”

When she walked with her friend back toward the house, she saw Smith lying on the ground and Keith gone.

The disagreement between Smith, who lived in the home, and Keith, who was homeless, began not long before in Smith’s upstairs room and appeared to have involved Smith asking Keith for oral sex , Fasce testified.

She recalled coming out of her room after hearing a commotion. She said she found Smith in the hallway outside his room, with blood on one temple and the opposite jaw. He was acting as drunk as she’d ever seen him, she told prosecutor Anne Masterson.

He was making noises, but not speaking recognizable words, she said.

Then she saw Keith trying to leave Smith’s room with belongings including a bag, a bottle of alcohol and a pair of shoes, saying things like, “Stop. I want to leave,” “I can’t believe he did this,” and “We’re friends,” Fasce recalled.

But Smith tried to prevent him from leaving, she said, “pushing” Keith back into the room and taking an aggressive, football player-like stance.

Fasce said she intervened, asking Smith to let Keith leave. “He listened to me,” she said.

She then walked with Keith down the stairs to the front porch, at which point Keith was almost in tears when he realized he’d left his socks behind, she said. He told her that he and Smith were friends but that Smith had propositioned him for oral sex and that he didn’t know what was wrong with Smith, she said.

“I was shocked,” she said. “I didn’t know if it was true or not. I was just trying to defuse the situation so the police did not come,” she said.

When Smith had come toward Keith in the room, Keith hit him, she recalled Keith telling her.

Fasce said Keith had indicated he would defend himself again if he needed to.

It was once Fasce got Keith to the porch that she spotted her friend parked down the street and, worried the police might come in response to the noisy house fight, went to warn him to move away or come into the house in case police arrived.

At the time she walked away, Smith was still in the house, she said. Once at her friend’s car, she heard the renewed sounds of fighting and saw the silhouettes of bodies moving through the yard in the dark. By the time she returned and found Smith, Keith was gone.

Fasce said Smith sometimes became threatening to her and some of the other people in the house. Once, she said, he threatened to “cut off my head and piss down my throat.”

But Smith never acted on his threats to her, she said when asked by Masterson. Smith said he was “very well-liked” in the homeless community.

“I liked Willie a lot,” she said, adding that for a time he was her favorite roommate. “He was very nice, kind of funny.”

But he was also known for having another side, she said. “It was scary.”

When asked about the case outside the court room, Keith’s lawyer, Scott Roberts of the public defender’s office, said only, “I think it speaks for itself.”

A family member of Smith’s also declined to comment outside the courtroom.

The preliminary hearing is set to continue Monday morning.

You can reach Staff Writer Jamie Hansen at 521-5205 or jamie.hansen@pressdemocrat.com.