Witness points out suspect in Santa Rosa pot killing

An Australian tourist testifying in a Santa Rosa courtroom Wednesday identified one of two men on trial in a pot dealer’s slaying last year at a Cleveland Avenue hotel.

Debbie King pointed out Donald Parker, 36, of Vallejo, when asked by prosecutor Barbara Nanney if the person she saw running from the Vagabond Inn was in the courtroom.

King was less sure about co-defendant David Espinal of Sacramento, who turns 47 Thursday, saying he looked familiar. He had a similar hairstyle to the man she saw get into a red car after shots rang out, she said.

“He’s bald,” she testified, looking across the room at Espinal, his head gleaming under overhead lights. “I had forgotten that until now.”

The two are charged with murdering Max Weinreb, 21, of Marin County, during a marijuana deal Aug.?31 in a ground-floor room at the hotel.

Weinreb was attempting to sell up to 10 pounds of pot when prosecutors said Espinal pulled a gun and shot him.

Parker and Espinal fled but were captured weeks later with evidence Parker left behind in the room, police said.

Both have pleaded not guilty. Their lawyers argue the killing was in self-defense when Weinreb pulled his own gun on them. Detectives found a gun under Weinreb’s body.

The night of the slaying, officers questioned all the guests in the 80-room hotel, renamed the Rodeway Inn. Among them was King, who had been on a whirlwind tour of southwestern states with her husband and another couple, looking at hot rods, she said.

The District Attorney’s Office paid for her to return to Sonoma County to testify, she said.

Last summer, after being unable to get two rooms at another hotel, she said the two couples checked into the Vagabond, which she described as a “dump,” drawing laughter.

She testified she was in her third-floor room around 7:30 p.m., searching the Internet for a restaurant, when she was startled by the sound of three or four gunshots.

“I was nervous and beside myself,” she said. “I had never heard anything like that before.”

King said she immediately looked out her window overlooking the parking lot. It was still light outside, she said.

“That’s when I saw two guys run out from the side of the hotel,” she said.

One was black and the other Mexican or Latino, she said. The man she identified as Parker, who is black, was carrying a black garbage bag, she said.

She said she didn’t focus on the other man. But she said Espinal, who was sitting next to Parker in court, “reminds me” of him.

Before she took the stand, the prosecution’s key witness, a Windsor drug dealer identified in court only as Noe, testified under a grant of immunity that he was in the room moments before Weinreb was killed.

Noe said he walked into room No. 115 to hand off a large bag of pot and then left, fearing a confrontation was about to happen. He testified he heard shots as he ran down the hallway.

His credibility was questioned when he admitted changing his story to police since his first interview. He first told investigators he didn’t know Weinreb had a gun, but a month before trial conceded Weinreb showed it to him before he went into the hotel.

You can reach Staff ?Writer Paul Payne at 568-5312 or paul.payne@pressdemocrat.com. ?On Twitter @ppayne.