Pubdate: Wed, 17 Nov 1999
Source: Sacramento Bee (CA)
Copyright: 1999 The Sacramento Bee
Contact:  P.O.Box 15779, Sacramento, CA 95852
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Author: Ramon Coronado, Bee Staff Writer

VICTIM DESCRIBES TERROR IN HOME: FRIEND KILLED

Fifteen-year-old Jennifer Salmon had fallen asleep on the living room sofa, 
watching a video movie, when the night's calm was shattered by gun-toting, 
obscenity-yelling men who kicked open the front door of her Fair Oaks home.

"I awoke to a whole bunch of yelling," she testified, her eyes welling up 
with tears. "I was shocked," she said, describing how she was shot in the 
belly and her brother's older friend, Riley Haeling, dove to shield her 
with his body. That heroism cost Haeling his life.

Five bullets tore into the 18-year-old, killing him within a matter of minutes.

Salmon survived the 2 a.m. attack.

"I got up, I lifted my shirt and I saw a pin-dot above my bellybutton ," 
Salmon said of the entrance wound from a 9 mm bullet that hit a rib and a 
lung before exiting near her armpit.

On Monday, Salmon concluded two days of testimony as the only eyewitness to 
the home invasion assault on Oct. 6, 1998.

Though she positively identified David Jonathan Quindt, 21, as her shooter, 
she testified that Quindt's co-defendant, Anthony Jason "TJ" Salcedo, 18, 
was not the other gunman.

"He was bigger than TJ," said Salmon, who knew Salcedo from encounters at 
Bella Vista High School. "It wasn't TJ."

Both men are fighting first-degree murder, attempted murder, robbery and 
other charges in connection with the attack at the Salmons' Maui Way home.

Deputy District Attorney Mark Curry told jurors last week that Salcedo was 
the "mastermind" in a plot to steal thousands of dollars in backyard 
marijuana that the Salmons claimed they were growing for medicinal purposes.

Under cross-examination from Assistant Public Defender Thomas Carlson, 
Salmon accused police officers and detectives of misquoting her. She said 
they were plain wrong in their reports.

There were only two gunmen, not five, and they were not dark-skinned 
minority suspects, Salmon said. One had his face covered with a bandana and 
his head topped with a baseball cap turned backward.

When asked if she ever told officers that she could never recognize her 
assailants, Salmon said, "I don't remember saying that, either."

At one point in her testimony, Salmon refused to answer a defense 
attorney's question about how many times -- and where -- she had smoked 
marijuana on the day of the shooting. She didn't want to answer until she 
could take a break to talk to others.

Later, when asked by Curry, Salmon said she needed the break to talk with 
the prosecutor and her mother because she didn't "want to get anyone in 
trouble."

According to the girl's testimony, the fear of getting her family and 
others in trouble also played a part in a previous event at the Salmon's 
Fair Oaks home.

The day before the fatal shooting, Salmon, Haeling and three others had 
yanked about a dozen pot plants from the back yard and stashed them for 
safekeeping, according to testimony.

Their actions came after Salmon's 18-year-old brother, Danny, was hit over 
the head with a baseball bat and hospitalized in an aborted robbery of the 
plants, witnesses said.

Instead of reporting the assault, the Salmon family cleaned up the home of 
paraphernalia.

"The law for our prescription is so vague I didn't know if the police were 
going to come," said Jennifer Salmon. "So we cleaned up as much as we could."

During the deadly home invasion, Curry maintains, Salcedo ran through the 
house searching in vain for the pot while Quindt kept Haeling and Salmon at 
bay in the living room.

Coming up with only a small quantity of marijuana in a bag, the gunmen 
fired their weapons in anger, the prosecutor maintains.

Testimony resumes this morning before Judge Richard H. Gilmour. 
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