St. Paul girl testifies about night her family was slain

As her family sobbed in the courtroom, 14-year-old Daneisha Thomas recalled the early morning four years ago when men in masks burst into her St. Paul home, tortured and murdered her stepfather and shot and killed her mother and sister as they lay next to her on the floor.

Thomas was the first witness to testify in the federal murder trial of Tyvarus Lee Lindsey and Rashad Raleigh, accused of killing three of her family members in what prosecutors say was a drug robbery turned triple homicide: Otahl Saunders, 31; Maria McLay, 32; and Brittany Kekedakis, 15, each were shot once in the head and killed.

Daneisha, who was 10 at the time, and her little brother Jason escaped unharmed that morning. On Tuesday, she described what she remembered.

Her family had been at a funeral during the day but had returned home in the North End of St. Paul. Her older sister, Brittany, had stayed up late studying for her driver's license permit test. When Daneisha heard footsteps in the hallway in the dark, early-morning hours, she said, she thought it was her sister.

Instead, it was four masked men in dark clothing. In his opening statement, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Paulsen said the men were looking for drugs and money. They killed the three to silence any witnesses, Paulsen told the jury.

Daneisha said they grabbed her and pulled her into her mother's room. They took Brittany by the hair and dragged her into her mother's room, too. Eventually, Daneisha said, the men took her, her mother, Jason and Brittany into her bedroom. They then took Saunders into the master bedroom.

She said she heard them talking loudly, questioning Saunders - who was known as T.C. - threatening, then hurting him, trying to find out where he'd stashed drugs and cash.

A man with a gun came into her room. Daneisha said she, her mother and her sister were on their stomachs next to each other on the floor. The man shot her mother in the head, Daneisha said. Then Brittany. Then the gunman left.

Daneisha said Tuesday that she could still hear her mother breathing. For a few moments, she tried to stop the bleeding. Then, after she made sure the men were gone, she put a coat on her little brother and they fled.

Saunders and Brittany were dead at the scene. McLay was pronounced dead after an ambulance rushed her to the hospital.

Defense attorneys Jon Hopeman and Andrew Birrell argued that Lindsey and Raleigh are not the killers, that no crime scene evidence links them to the home on Burgess Avenue. The only evidence, said Hopeman, who is representing Lindsey, is the testimony of criminals trying to shorten prison time.

Burrell, who represents Raleigh, also said there is no physical evidence connecting his client to the crime. He said that Raleigh allegedly confessed after he was indicted in the Burgess Avenue slayings because he was frightened by the possibility of the death penalty. Prosecutors have said they are not seeking the death penalty.

The two defendants spent much of Tuesday's proceedings impassively, except for when Daneisha was testifying. As she spoke, neither man looked at her. At other times, during breaks and the testimony of other witnesses, they even smiled and chatted with their attorneys and each other.

Even if they are acquitted, they will not be free men. Both are already in prison for other murders.

Raleigh pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the May 2007 beating death of former basketball player-turned-probation officer Howard Porter in return for a deal with state prosecutors that he would not be charged in the triple homicide. That deal, apparently, did not preclude federal charges. He is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole at the Oak Park Heights Prison.

Lindsey, too, is in Oak Park Heights, sentenced to 36 years for the April 2005 killing of a man whose SUV Lindsey tried to steal.