Gunman found guilty in Vegas Strip casino shooting

[July 14, 2009]  LAS VEGAS (AP) -- A Nevada jury found an unemployed house painter guilty of 51 of 52 felony charges against him in a shooting inside a Las Vegas Strip casino two years ago.

Steven Francis Zegrean showed no emotion as he sat between his lawyers and a Hungarian language translator while the verdicts were delivered late Monday in Clark County District Court in Las Vegas.

A court clerk who spent more than 20 minutes reading the charges at the start of the trial took about nine minutes to read the verdicts at the end.

"He was very realistic. We understood there was a strong likelihood he would be convicted," said Zegrean's public defense lawyer, Lynn Avants. "He's going to be going to prison."

Prosecutor Ravi Bawa said he will argue that Zegrean, 53, should spend the rest of his life in prison.

"The longer that man is in prison, the safer we all are," he said.

No one disputed Zegrean was the man who unleashed a fusillade of 16 shots in six seconds early July 6, 2007, from a mezzanine balcony at the New York-New York casino. Four people were wounded before patrons realized the pops they heard were gunshots and not Fourth of July firecrackers.

The most seriously hurt, Carrie Zeravica, 25, of North Huntington, Pa., sobbed as she testified last week that nerve damage from a wound to her left leg ruined her dreams of becoming a dance teacher.

Troy Sanchez, 15, of Los Angeles, testified he was walking with his mother when he was shot in the foot.

Security video showed people slipping on the polished marble floors as they scurried around corners, and others huddling for cover behind blinking slot machines. Authorities said a fifth person, a woman, was hurt fleeing the casino.

District Court Judge David Barker will have wide latitude at sentencing Aug. 31. Zegrean could face hundreds of years for his convictions, including three to 40 years for each of the 16 felony charges of attempted murder with use of a deadly weapon -- one for each shot fired.

The jury of six men and six women deliberated 4 1/2 hours after hearing 22 prosecution witnesses during the weeklong trial. Bawa and Avants said jurors told them they acquitted Zegrean of one attempted murder charge because they could not determine he tried to kill a man who said he threatened him after his gun malfunctioned following the 16th shot.

Zegrean also was convicted of 16 charges of discharging a firearm in a structure, 13 charges of assault with a deadly weapon, four charges of battery with a weapon resulting in substantial bodily harm, plus burglary and carrying a concealed weapon.

Zegrean, whose lawyers say speaks with a thick Hungarian accent, never spoke during the trial and did not testify in his defense. His daughters, ages 25 and 22, watched most of the trial from the courtroom audience but also did not testify. They did not attend court when the verdict was reached.

Avants said Zegrean will appeal his convictions.

Zegrean's only defense witness, clinical neuropsychologist Thomas Kinsora, told the jury on Friday that Zegrean wanted police to kill him, -- an act prosecutors called an attempt at "suicide by cop."

Kinsora said Zegrean spiraled into a profound depression over the loss of his job, his marriage and his house, and prosecutors said he wandered the Las Vegas Strip in a tan overcoat with pockets full of bullets before he went into the casino after midnight and started shooting.

"This is a guy who needed medication, psychotherapy and alcohol treatment," Kinsora testified. "His intent was to raise a panic to get someone to shoot him and put him out of his misery. No one saved him, basically."

The defense lawyer told jurors that Zegrean never aimed at or intended to hurt anyone else.

Bawa argued that the reason Zegrean didn't kill anyone was because his gun jammed after 16 shots.

He was tackled at that moment by a national guardsman and Iraq War veteran from North Dakota who has been hailed as a hero for his actions.

Justin Lampert, now a 26-year-old active-duty Army trainer at Fort Benning, Ga., told jurors he reacted instinctively.

With Lampert in the witness stand, jurors viewed videotaped images of Lampert wrestling for several seconds with the much larger Zegrean before an vacationing Navy reservist, David James, 32, of Jacksonville, Fla., kicked the gun away and two off-duty Florida state police agents helped restrain Zegrean.

"Did you think it was him or you?" prosecutor Ravi Bawa asked Lampert during his testimony July 8.

"Definitely, sir," Lampert replied.

[Associated Press; By KEN RITTER]

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