Opinion ID: 2815883
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The shooting of Nigel Hider

Text: In February 1989, Nigel Hider, an active gang member in the Gardena Payback Crips, was standing in front of a house in Riverside when a truck pulled up and someone inside the vehicle started firing at him. Hider was initially uncooperative with police and reluctant to identify the shooter, but eventually told the detective that defendant shot him. Angela McCurdy was with Hider when he was shot, and, in 2000, she told an investigator that she had seen a muzzle flash from a car fired by a Black male with a bald head, but she could not say for certain whether the shooter was defendant. At the penalty phase retrial, however, Hider testified that he never said defendant shot him and that he had identified the shooter as a White person. In her testimony, McCurdy denied seeing the shooting or telling the contrary to an investigator. The prosecution also presented evidence that, approximately one month before Hider was shot, defendant bragged to an officer that he had single-handedly expelled the Gardena Payback Crips gang from the Casa Blanca neighborhood. 10