Year after being shot, robbery victim says she feels frustrated and fearful
A year after she was shot twice in the back during a robbery in front of her teenage daughter, Tracy Hilliard said she is frustrated “that nothing has been done.”
Despite the sentencing of one of her attackers in April, Hilliard said the real shooter has yet to be charged.
Dimitri Laine, who was sentenced to four to 24 years in prison for an attempted murder charge from the June shooting, confessed to taking part in the robbery of Hilliard and her daughter, but said he did not pull the trigger.
Hilliard has been unable to identify the two men who walked up to her and her daughter with guns and demanded their purses. Police caught them through other means.
But the prosecutor in the case argued at Laine’s sentencing that he was the triggerman, citing an account given by Hilliard’s daughter.
Hilliard recalled last week that at the sentencing, when she saw Laine for the first time, “I knew he wasn’t the one who shot me but by that time it was too late. What could I do?”
She said she recognized Laine’s eyes as those of the man who tried to grab her purse, which was tangled in shopping bags.
“I still had my hands tied in my bags and was kind of shuffled around when I was shot. I can’t remember exactly the timeline on everything … But unless he can shuffle with me in the front and shoot me in the back at the same time he had to be in front of me when I got shot,” Hilliard said.
Laine identified 18-year-old Ryan Royal as the shooter but refused to testify against him.
Ballistics tests matched the bullet found in Hilliard’s body to a gun police found at the North Las Vegas home of Royal’s mother.
Justice of the Peace Douglas Smith threw out prosecutors’ case against Royal, saying they failed to show a proper chain of custody for the bullet that doctors pulled from Hilliard. He suggested Chief Deputy District Attorney Victoria Villegas take the case to the grand jury.
“It’s still under investigation,” Villegas said last week. “We’re doing some testing.”
She declined to elaborate further but emphasized her office is still pursuing the case.
Hilliard said the district attorney’s office informed her it recently sent the clothing Laine and Royal wore the day of the shooting to be tested for gunshot residue.
Royal, who is out on bail, is facing robbery charges in District Court for an unrelated crime. That trial was delayed this spring. Royal’s defense attorney cited a potential future grand jury indictment as the reason.
But Hilliard said she’s frustrated because the district attorney’s office first told her Royal was the shooter and no one warned her when he made bail on the other case. She said she fears for her and her daughter’s safety.
“I’m feeling like I didn’t do enough to help people out,” Hilliard said. “Police did a great job getting those boys that night but something happened between then and the trial and I don’t know what.”
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