Post by Graveyardbride on Feb 28, 2015 8:30:24 GMT -5
Road Rage Shooting or Drug Deal Gone Wrong?
Tammy Meyers (above) was killed by Erich Nowsch in a “prescription drug deal gone bad” according to one man who has been pulled into the saga. The alleged murder of the mother-of-four by a 19-year-old she knew from the next street in a so called “road rage” incident has perplexed America with its daily twists and turns.
The family's version of events as to how Mrs. Meyers and her armed son came to be followed back to her house and shot at by Nowsch and two accomplices has changed over the course of the last week, but many are still not satisfied the fatal shooting was provoked by a misunderstanding while she was teaching her teenage daughter to drive.
The family remains silent on the matter, but local resident Robert Selig, 47, thinks he knows the truth after being part of Nowsch's inner circle before he was turned on and threatened by him and his friends. In an exclusive interview with MailOnline, he said: “Nobody chased nobody down. The son and mother left the Meyers residence looking for Erich on a drug deal gone bad. That's the word on the street. A prescription drug deal gone bad. All this stuff with Mrs. Meyers, is all pharmaceutical pills and drugs. That's what Erich sold at that park. And that's why Mrs. Meyers went there, picking up pharmaceutical pills from Erich, like Xanax. The kid sold it right there at that concrete table, day in day out.”
Nowsch appeared in court in Las Vegas to be arraigned. He spoke only to his lawyer, Conrad Claus, and a date for his preliminary hearing was set for March 10 at 9 a.m. Robert Myers, Tammy’s husband, was present and stared intensely at Nowsch throughout the five-minute hearing. As he left court, he said: “I'll be here every court date. You'll see me here at every hearing. That's what Tammy would want.”
The case has attracted much attention after Meyers family members changed their version of the events in the lead-up to the shooting. Initially, they had claimed Mrs. Meyers was giving her daughter a driving lesson at night and had become embroiled in an argument with Nowsch, who had followed them home and shot at them. It later emerged she had returned to the house and recruited her 22-year-old son Brandon to accompany her to look for Nowsch. Brandon took his handgun and shots were fired approximately two blocks from the Meyers family home, before Nowsch and either one or two accomplices followed them back to their residence and shot Mrs. Meyers.
Speaking outside court, Clark County District Attorney Steven B. Wolfson said: “We have a preliminary hearing set for a couple of weeks and that is the first opportunity when evidence will be presented in the courtroom. 'I've been on this case since day one working with police and detectives. My focus is what is the evidence in the case is. That is the first opportunity for the evidence to be presented in court, we'll have a judge that will determine if there is probable cause to send this case to trial, we feel very confident in our case and will proceed accordingly.” Wolfson said it was a little early to tell if Nowsch could potentially face the death penalty, adding: “In any murder case whenever there are considerations regarding the death penalty, it will be presented to the death penalty assessment committee, but that's a few weeks to a month away.”
Outside the courthouse, Wolfson told Daily Mail Online: “There's been some speculation about drugs and drug use – but that's not the heart of the case. The center focus of this case is the interaction between adults which occurred one night – that's the focus. Somebody lost their life and it was stupid.
Father-of-four Selig – known to friends as “Stan” – claims he, like Mrs Meyers and her family, had taken Nowsch in and given him food and money when he needed it most. His eldest son used to be good friends with Nowsch and he had been to his house “hundreds” of times before he turned on Selig and his family. “'My life is in danger,” he said. “I was even threatened after they had Erich in custody. He wanted to kill my kids. He went after my kids, he went after my daughter with a knife, he went after my son trying to steal his bike, he went after me. It literally took the death of a person for [police] to wake up and see the problems. There's more kids out there and they do carry guns and they'll use them. I've let Erich stay in my house, I've given him food, I've given him a few dollars to go out. Mrs Meyers did the same thing, the only thing is I didn't buy drugs from Erich. I don't do any of that crap.”
Television crews were on hand to witness the spectacle of Nowsch's arrest on Thursday, February 19, which played out like something from a movie, with SWAT teams and a helicopter to flush the 5' 3', 19-year-old boy from his home – but things turned ugly for Selig after the arrest when one of Norwich’s pals, Jeremy Jongepier, threatened him and his son with a pistol. Police intervened and later that night Jongepier was arrested after a search of his car turned up a handgun. He has since been charged with two counts of assault with a deadly weapon.
The police report states that after driving by Selig's house in the afternoon, Jongepier went farther down the street before stopping to hurl abuse, which another local, Sandy Wright, heard clearly. She explained: “I heard tires, cars racing and screeching, screaming and yelling and cussing. There's a guy in a white car yelling all these obscenities for around two minutes. I walked out and could see [Selig] walking down, and the guy was yelling, ‘You fucking pussy, I'll take care of you! You don't scare me, old man! Why do you pick on little boys who can't defend themselves? I'll come back and take you and your whole family out!’ 'From what I gathered, this kid blamed Stan [Sleig] for Erich being arrested, thinking he had turned him in.”
After Jongepier had been detained by police, Lieutenant Bobby Smith of the Gang Crimes Bureau and Gang Narcotics Bureau at Las Vegas Metropolitan Police told reporters Jongeier and Nowsch were “claiming some type of affiliation” with each other. It is rumored they are both members of the Alta Block gang – named for Alta Drive, which runs close to the location of Tammy Meyers' murder, and the addresses where Selig, Jongepier and Nowsch live, centered around the Ansan Sister City Park, where the latter is said to have dealt drugs. This supposed gang affiliation has played a big part in making residents reluctant to talk. Many people feel the area had become more dangerous over the last year and that burglaries and car theft had increased.
It has been speculated there could have been a gang motive behind the death of Mrs. Meyers, but Sandy Wright’s son, Colorado, 19, is friendly with her sons: Brandon, 22, Matthew, 20, and Robert, 23, and also knows Nowsch, and finds the idea absurd. “'The Meyers brothers had met him a couple of times and maybe hung out with him back in the day, but they're not the same crowd,” Colorado said. “The Meyers get a little cocky sometimes, but they're nice people, they don't deserve what happened to them. Erich, on the other hand, has Napoleon Syndrome all the way. He would always try to argue. Erich was mixed up in drugs – a lot. Weed, meth probably, molly, Ecstasy. He was always dealing drugs. He had a mo-ped at one time and he would go up and down the streets in this neighborhood selling to everybody. He'd be walking down the street yelling out 'I got weed!' so loud and brazen about it. Most definitely he'd have been under the influence of drugs on the night of the shooting. I didn't think he'd have the guts to pull off something like that. Hearing he did and to one of my best friend's moms, that's not cool.”
Police have been playing down any references to the Alta Block gang, with officer Miguel Garcia saying, “We cant say it is an actual gang or how many people are in it, because our detectives are working right now to figure out if it's a real gang or not.” Garcia explained how many kids go around spreading a name for their little group of friends, but that doesn't mean they are engaged in illegal activity.
However, Colorado Wright insists Alta Block is definitely real. “It's a really small-time thing where the people in it are way bigger than life,” he said. “I don't know how many people are actually in it, but I know that the people who are dumb enough to take on the world. Nowsch affiliated himself with a lot of those people, so there's a high probability he was involved. They're not really overeducated. They're very hot-headed. I had a party and some Alta Block people came into it, around 40 of them. But my friends sided with me and we made them leave.”
Nowsch is seen in pictures on Facebook posing thuggishly with cash and displaying his tattoos, but this gangster persona is a relatively new development for him. DailyMail Online spoke to one person who has known him for a number of years – who asked not to be named – and he reported that three years ago, Nowsch had just one tattoo and was always getting picked on by bigger kids. “Baby G, everybody called him that because he was so small,” the source explained. “He's 19, but looks 14. He had to take pills just to grow. Everyone kept on robbing him and robbing him. I think he got a gun because he was getting robbed. I saw him four days before the shooting and he showed me the gun. He told me it was registered to him. He said he had got it for protection. But do I see him going around shooting somebody's mom? No.”
Meanwhile members of the Meyers family are still trying to come to terms with their loss. Tragically, the night of the shooting was also her son, Matthew's, 20th birthday. His girlfriend, Pam Vinieratos – with whom he has a baby daughter – recalled receiving the devastating telephone call in bed after they had been out together. “It was his birthday and we'd been out having a great time,” she recounted. “Then at 11.30 at night, I get a phone call telling us his mom has been shot. It was very shocking, and not something you want to hear, especially when you're awoken with it in the middle of the night.”
Ms. Vinieratos, 18, has been providing as much support as possible since Mrs. Meyers’ death, as the only female presence the family has now, along with Kristal Meyers, 15. “Since the accident, I've been spending as much time there as I can. But sometimes the police won't let me over there. Sometimes they have been under investigation and I can't go over there,” she said. “I have no idea if the investigation is ongoing, I know very little about it. Plus Matt wants to be alone with his family.”
Ms. Vinieratos claimed she had never heard the name Erich Nowsch before he was arrested, but said she is glad he has now been apprehended and charged with murder, attempted murder and discharge of a gun within a vehicle.
When asked why the family had changed their story, she explained: “Bob [Tammy Meyers’ husband]] didn't want to interrupt what the police were going through. If we spoke to the news and told them what we honestly knew, I don't think it would have helped the police's investigation to find this man.”
Las Vegas police are still searching for a second suspect in the murder of Tammy Meyers.
Source: Andy Tillett, The Daily Mail, February 23, 2015.
