Murder victim Sandi Sutton-Wasmund, 48, and her husband, James. Mrs. Sutton-Wasmund was on her way to the airprort, and left behind three teenaged children.
Murder victim Michael Boldon, 62. Mr. Boldon was driving Mrs. Sutton-Wasmund to the airport in his taxi. When he wasn’t driving, he was caring for his 93-year-old mother, owned two homes, and was looking forward to celebrating his 63rd birthday in two weeks.
Murder victim Ken Cherry, 27, aka Kenny Clutch, was a pimp and a convicted felon. However, his multiple lawyers deny he had ever been in any trouble with the law, and his father insists that it is “racist” to describe Cherry/Clutch as anything but “a good boy.”
Las Vegas mass murder suspect Ammar Asim Faruq Harris in an undated mug shot
Posted by Nicholas Stix
[Previously, at WEJB/NSU:
“Las Vegas: Black Pimp Kenneth Cherry Jr., aka Kenny Clutch, is Murdered While Driving His Maserati, Plus 2 Innocent Vics in Taxicab; Media, Attorney, Cops Respond with Competition to See Who Can Tell the Most Outrageous Racial Fairy Tales”;
“Las Vegas: Police Reveal Names of Real Victims and Suspect in Pimp Mass Murder Case; Suspect is Convicted Felon Charged in Kidnapping, Rape, Etc., with History of Bail-Jumping; Pimp’s Father Plays Race Card; Yet Another Lawyer Working for Dead Pimp Materializes to Lie, Denying Pimp Had Any Criminal Record!”; and
“In Las Vegas Strip Mass Murder, Dear Old Dad Lied: Maserati-Driving ‘Aspiring Rapper’ Ken Cherry, aka Kenny Clutch was a Pimp!”]
Pimp’s Father Plays Race Card
Video by Justin Yurkanin
Las Vegas Review-Journal
Feb. 23 at 4:50 p.m.
Father of Maserati driver speaks about son's life
The father of the Kenneth Cherry Jr., the man who was shot while driving a Maserati on the Strip last Thursday, spoke to the media about his son in a press conference in Las Vegas on Saturday.
[Considering that every word out of the elder Cherry’s mouth is a lie, including “and” and “the,” I’m surely going to suspend disbelief, and buy his line about making it rich in real estate. Not!]
Video by Justin Yurkanin
Las Vegas Review-Journal
Feb. 26 at 1:24 p.m.
Kenny Cherry Jr.'s girlfriend says he wasn't a pimp
Asmayit "May" Hagos, the girlfriend of Kenny Cherry Jr., refutes [sic] allegations in the media that he was a pimp during a press conference at a law office in Las Vegas on Tuesday. Cherry was the man shot while driving his Maserati on the Las Vegas Strip last Thursday. The shooting and subsequent accident killed three people in all. The shooter remains at large.
[N.S.: Since she’s repeatedly been arrested for prostitution and worse, while working for Cherry, it would be impossible for her to “refute” the allegations. All she can do is deny them. And there was no “subsequent accident”; when you murder someone, and that murder causes additional deaths, the additional deaths are murders, not accidental deaths.
Hagos is worse than a whore: She was allegedly in business of enticing men into contracting for her services, and then robbing them—“grand larceny-trick roll”—presumably with Cherry. ]
By John L. Smith
Posted: Feb. 24, 2013 | 2:21 a.m.; updated 8:18 a.m.
Las Vegas Review Journal
Comments (122) | Add a commentRELATED CONTENT
The bullet Kenny Cherry Jr. courted left the barrel years ago.
It arrived early Thursday morning on Las Vegas Boulevard and put the 27-year-old hustler with delusions of grandeur in the national spotlight for half a news cycle.
While police investigated leads and identified a suspect in the shooting, Cherry's father, Kenneth Cherry Sr., held a news conference Saturday and defended his son, calling him a victim and a good kid who only played a tough guy in YouTube videos.
Cherry Jr. called himself "Kenny Clutch," and published reports have referred to him as an "aspiring rapper" who delivered uninspiring ditties via YouTube that celebrated a thug life teeming with pimps, whores, drugs, guns and money.
He knew plenty about all of that. According to court documents, Cherry was a stone pimp who beat his women and spent the money they earned turning tricks in Strip casinos. He was fond of weed and narcotic cough syrup and his reflection in a nightclub mirror.
He died like a bad rap song, and good riddance. The real tragedy is that he took two innocent bystanders with him when his leased Maserati plowed into a Desert Cab on the Boulevard at Flamingo Road. Driver Michael Boldon, 62, and his passenger, Maple Valley, Wash., tourist Sandra Sutton-Wasmund, 48, were engulfed in a ball of fire when the cab's gas tank exploded.
I'm sure there's a rap lyric in there somewhere. No one with a scintilla of conscience would try to find it.
Cherry had a few minor brushes with local law enforcement - speeding tickets in which he gave the officer a California driver's license with an Oakland address - but his lack of convictions in Nevada don't tell the story. Despite having no visible means of income, he drove a Maserati and stayed in a $2,900-a-month condominium at the Metropolis at 360 E. Desert Inn Road.
Maybe knowledge of his job slipped the mind of his attorney Vicki Greco when she told a reporter Cherry was no gang member and, "He was a loyal, dependable friend, and we at the law firm will miss him."
Yeah, he was a real charmer. But I'm not sure whether the mother of one of his children would agree. Before she ran away, Mr. Dependable Friend pimped her out and beat her often.
She was born in 1986 into a home riddled with abuse and drugs. According to court documents, after her drug-addicted mother wound up in prison, at 2 the girl went to live with her grandparents, who devoted themselves to putting her on a positive path.
"I was fortunate to have my grandparents," she would write years later. "I grew up in a beautiful small town and participated in gymnastics, band and all types of sports."
In high school, she excelled in softball and was an A student. After graduating, she earned an associate's degree at a nearby community college and took university classes, but in 2008 she met Cherry through a friend.
After encountering him again at a Strip nightclub, she struck up a relationship she didn't imagine would lead to a life of prostitution in Las Vegas. Maybe it's because the rapping Cherry seemed so generous, so loyal and dependable.
"He promised me the world and I believed every bit of it," she recalled in 2012. "He invited me to move to Las Vegas and 'check it out.' I felt like I had nothing else solid going on and figured it might be fun to live someplace else. I was naive. I had faith and confidence in him and that he wanted a future with me. I did not know at the time that my future would consist of prostituting myself, getting beaten up by Ken on a regular basis, and being arrested and going to jail 27 times.
" I don't know how to explain how it happened in a way that would make sense to anyone. He said it was 'no big deal' and 'easy money.' "
Before long, she was working six nights a week. Her evening quota was $1,500. Come home without it and face the consequences.
"Kenny took every penny I made," she said.
By July 2010, she discovered she was pregnant. She imagined having a baby together might settle him down, but she was kidding herself. He only became more abusive, and kept other women - one of whom was also pregnant - in other Las Vegas apartments.
Their checkered history together includes her application for a restraining order following paternity and domestic violence claims she made in a California court. In a document filed Sept. 7, 2011, in Superior Court, she swore she suffered bruises, cuts and abrasions after being cuffed around repeatedly by Cherry. Photographs showed she was battered. Her Clark County arrest history, with charges reduced to trespassing and a court-ordered AIDS awareness course, begins in May 2009 and is riddled with the telltale signs of a working prostitute.
She wrote that Cherry, "physically assaulted me, pushing me into walls and hitting me. I packed up some belongings and drove back to my family ... Along with the physical abuse, he has consistently been verbally abusive during our relationship."
It shouldn't have been surprising. That's what pimps do to their women. The former couple also sparred legally over custody and visitation issues involving their young daughter.
It's likely Greco would know something about that. She not only represented Cherry, but according to court records she also was the woman's criminal lawyer. Maybe it slipped the attorney's mind while she was grieving over the loss of Mr. Dependable Friend.
Kenny Clutch caught his bullet Thursday morning on the Boulevard, but save your tears for cabdriver Boldon and passenger Sutton-Wasmund, whose devastated family members will deal with their loss the rest of their lives.
Then say a prayer for all the women of the night who, for reasons most of us can't fully comprehend, find themselves under the pimp's spell.
John L. Smith's column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. Email him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call 702-383-0295. He also blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/Smith.
By John L. Smith
Comments (55) | Add a comment
Kenneth Cherry Sr. cries as he talks during a news conference in Las Vegas Saturday about the death of his son Kenny Cherry. Kenny Cherry was shot and killed early Thursday morning while driving his Maserati on the Las Vegas Strip. »
Posted: Feb. 25, 2013 | 5:54 p.m.
Updated: Feb. 26, 2013 | 12:33 p.m.
Kenneth Cherry Sr. set aside his grief long enough to hold a Saturday news conference after the shooting death of his son, Kenny Cherry Jr., two days earlier on Las Vegas Boulevard.
After suffering a gunshot wound to the chest early Thursday, a dying Cherry Jr. drove his leased Maserati into a Desert Cab, killing driver Michael Boldon and passenger Sandra Sutton-Wasmund of Seattle.
Cherry Sr. called his son an aspiring rapper with the moniker "Kenny Clutch" a good kid who was a victim of senseless violence.
But dad didn't tell the reporters present what the 27-year-old did to pay the condo rent and the lease on that Maserati. If we presume for the sake of discussion Kenneth Sr. didn't know his son was a pimp, the father needn't have looked far for confirmation.
He could have asked one of his son's girlfriends, Asmayit "May" Hagos. She lived with Cherry Jr., and her arrest record indicates she worked for him.
Hagos wasn't exactly in hiding. She also attended that news conference.
She was cited by a Metro traffic officer while driving a vehicle registered to Cherry Jr., but it's when Hagos isn't driving that she gets in the most trouble.
In 2011, she was arrested on charges of soliciting prostitution, criminal conspiracy and grand larceny-trick roll. In keeping with the local justice system's long history of taking it easy on prostitutes and positively coddling pimps, the charges against her were negotiated and reduced.
A check of the arrest record of a former girlfriend of Cherry shows the same pattern of prostitution behavior: arrest, negotiation, fine and back to work.
Hagos hasn't been off local law enforcement's radar. Far from it.
On Feb. 20, District Judge Jennifer Togliatti signed a bench warrant for her arrest for violating the terms of her probation in the 2011 case. That bench warrant was signed just a day before Hagos' boyfriend died on the street.
Surely Hagos will want to fill in the grieving father on the sordid details. Maybe she can also tell him whether Kenny Clutch had had a falling out with his former late-night running mate, Ammar "Ash" Harris. Authorities on Friday issued an arrest warrant for Harris in connection with the shooting. They are seeking the public's help in locating the suspect, who police say shot Cherry in the chest.
Harris was last seen driving a black Range Rover, which police later recovered. He wasn't alone in the Range Rover, sources confirm.
Because Cherry's father is surely interested in justice being done, perhaps he will implore family lawyer Bob Beckett to help make available witnesses that might assist the police in their homicide investigation. My attempt to reach Beckett, the former Nye County district a ttorney, was unsuccessful.
While the grieving father made much of his deceased son's gentle nature, the facts say otherwise. Dad's protestations aside, in 2007 Cherry Jr. was convicted of a gun charge in California. According to court documents, he severely beat a former girlfriend who also was the mother of one of his children.
After she tired of being used as a prostitute and watching every dollar she earned go into his pocket, the fights and beatings escalated.
On Sept. 1, 2011, at the apartment they shared, she would write in an affidavit, "He chased me down the hall. I tried to lock myself in the bathroom. He broke the door and started hitting me, over and over again. I tried to protect myself in the corner of the shower. He hit me so many times I was seeing stars. I finally managed to run out into the hallway and he came after me, hitting me until I collapsed on the floor where he proceeded to kick me twice, once in my head and once in my thigh. He then threw me out into the main hallway and locked me out of the apartment until he left."
Sounds like the good kid was having a bad day, but that's the way it is with pimps.
John L. Smith's column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. Email him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call 702-383-0295. He blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/Smith.
Blacks generally can't separate fact from fiction hence there's always these protestations from family members and friends that some dead or incarcerated criminal was really a great person, a wonderful family member. Reminds me of the Zimmerman case where Trayvon's parents have claimed their budding criminal was really just some innocent child. The president of the country actually stuck his nose into a local story and likened him to a son. Perhaps he should do so in this case also.
ReplyDeleteThey should all get Academy Awards for their ability to project the image of wounded innocence.
The lawyers also never fail to do their part in being sleazy. That's why the image of the profession is so low.
Is the pimp's family thinking there might be some way of cashing in, of hitting the ghetto lottery in some way? Maybe they'll try a lawsuit against the city, police or hospital.
Concerning the elder Cherry's claims to have become rich in "real estate," I have read this is a way of laundering drug money.
ReplyDeleteDavid In TN