Opinion ID: 3133191
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Carmela Bacod’s statement to the police

Text: Two days after the shootings Detective Mark Huelskoetter, the lead detective in the case, received a phone call from Carmela Bacod, which he recorded.2 The 17-year-old Bacod described a series of events stretching back “about two weeks now,” which had started when “Ryan Sanders, he stole money from one of our friends.” She explained that Richards had been her best friend since third grade, that she had known Moore “for a couple months,” and that she had met Ketzler once. She stated that she had never met Sanders. Bacod reported that she “was supposed to go with them to their house . . . that night,” and correctly stated that Ketzler and Porterfield, both of whom she physically described, had been present along with Moore and Richards. Bacod described a phone call with Richards “about a week and a half ago,” in which Richards told Bacod that Richards, Moore, Ketzler, and Porterfield had been hanging out with Sanders one night when they all fell asleep and woke up to discover Sanders gone, along with money that had belonged to Ketzler. Bacod told Detective Huelskoetter that “they wanted to go beat him up to get the money back,” and that “Ashlee [Richards] just told me that they wanted the money back, and then they were gonna jump ‘em for it.” Bacod also told Detective Huelskoetter that Richards “told me that earlier they tried before or something like that, and Ryan’s brother got mad or something and pulled a gun on [Raven Ketzler’s] face, or something like that.” And she answered affirmatively when Detective Huelskoetter asked her, “[Y]ou know that Travis [Moore] wanted to beat Ryan [Sanders] up over the money?” and “[W]hen they were goin’ over there that was pretty much the idea, is that Travis [Moore] was gonna beat [Sanders] up?” 2 A transcript of the call follows this opinion as an appendix. -5- 7058 Later in the call, Bacod was more circumspect. When Detective Huelskoetter asked her if she “knew that kinda the plan was that Travis [Moore] and his girlfriend and Ashlee [Richards] and — and some other girl named Raven [Ketzler] were gonna go over there and essentially jump them to get their money back,” Bacod stated, “Not — not jump, like, you know, like, talk.” She then stated, “But obviously they’re young, so, you know, there’s gonna be violence in it. But I couldn’t stop them.”3 Bacod gave Detective Huelskoetter her name, date of birth, phone number, and address. She took his name and direct phone number, which she recorded with a pen she requested from her mother, and told him she would call if she thought of anything else. Sanders was not informed of Bacod’s call to Detective Huelskoetter until March 2008, more than a year later. Before trial and less than three months after Sanders had learned of her call, Bacod was killed in a car accident.