Judge rules suspects in fatal shooting outside Santa Rosa bar can go to trial

Two men tracked 27-year-old Kenneth McDaniel through a festive crowd that packed the Whiskey Tip bar in southwestern Santa Rosa for a hip-hop show, then gunned him down outside, according to bar security camera footage presented this week in court.

The men fired as many as 29 shots on the night of the Sept. 25, 2021, shooting. One of the gunmen blazed away over the hood of a moving car as he cut across the parking lot while the other fired from a different angle. They struck McDaniel 19 times. He died as a result of his injuries.

Sonoma County prosecutors said the gunmen were Santa Rosa residents Fogatia Fuiava, 30, and Ednie Afamasaga, 28.

The details were presented to Sonoma County Superior Court Judge Christopher Honigsberg during a two-day preliminary hearing this week, after which he ruled there was sufficient evidence to bring Afamasaga and Fuiava to trial on four felony counts.

Honigsberg threw out a charge of attempted murder, saying there wasn’t sufficient evidence the shooters had intended to kill another man, who escaped injury while standing next to McDaniel in the parking lot.

The prosecution presented a 17-minute video compiled from the bar’s six surveillance cameras, but defense attorneys for the two men dispute Chief Deputy District Attorney Anne Masterson’s case that Fuiava and Afamasaga are the two responsible for the shooting.

Masterson presented two witnesses, a former bouncer from the bar and the lead investigator, Santa Rosa Police Department Detective Matt White.

Defense attorneys questioned whether the bouncer, Jon Tracy, could have reliably identified the defendants as the shooters following brief interactions at the door where the man alleged to be Afamasaga didn’t remove a face mask when he showed his drivers license. Tracy was unable to identify Afamasaga when Santa Rosa Police Department detectives provided him a set of six photographs within days of the shooting.

On the stand, however, he said he could identify Afamasaga, who was seated in court next to his defense attorney, as the shooter because his eyes, facial structure and body size matched that of a man he let into the bar and later saw do the shooting.

After the shooting, Tracy rushed to the parking lot where he found McDaniel crumpled on the ground next to his friend’s truck. Tracy, a single father with a long history of working bar security, left the profession because of the shooting, he said. It showed that “anything could happen,” he said.

The surveillance video shows two men moving around the bar, at one point standing stiffly at the back of a dancing crowd. McDaniel is in the crowd. There was at least one exchange in the club between McDaniel and one of his eventual killers, according to the prosecution.

As the prosecution played the video, the victim’s aunt, Juanita McDaniel, cried softly in a corner of the courtroom.

“My baby,” she said repeatedly. When McDaniel’s face came close to the camera in one segment of footage, she gasped.

The aunt was joined by two other female relatives of McDaniel’s. A group that at times reached a dozen people were present to support the defendants.

According to police and prosecutors, McDaniel left the bar through the front entrance and headed into the parking lot 30 minutes before the shooting. At this point, the two shooters were standing next to a taco truck in the corner of the lot. In the video, McDaniel appears to see them, stop short and quickly return into the bar.

White testified he believed McDaniel retreated because he had identified enemies.

To White, a former gang crimes detective, the coordination and aggressiveness of the shooting indicated an act of revenge.

“There appeared to be a strong motive,” he said.

On the Sunday morning after the shooting, White began looking through police reports for recent shootings where the victim was uncooperative. He found an incident from months before the shooting where Fuiava had arrived at a hospital wounded by a shooting in a southwestern Santa Rosa park, but did not cooperate with police.

From there, White researched Fuiava’s social media accounts and found a series of rap videos posted online, he testified. In many of those videos Fuiava and Afamasaga appeared wearing clothes with a unique logo that read “sons of Polynesia,” White testified. The two men are of Asian Pacific Island descent, though they’re exact heritage was not discussed in trial.

White did not find evidence the clothing was a brand name for sale, he said. He testified the shooters in the video wore similar clothing.

Prosecutors have not brought any charges indicating they have evidence the shooting was gang related.

Honigsberg set a Sept. 30 arraignment date for Fuiava and Afamasaga.

You can reach Staff Writer Andrew Graham at 707-526-8667 or andrew.graham@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @AndrewGraham88