Jury convicts Burien man of Kent Shell station murders

A jury took only a few hours to convict a 31-year-old Burien man of two counts of first-degree murder for the shooting deaths of two Shell service station employees two years ago in Kent.

Leland Dean Russell Jr. will face a sentence range of 55-68 years when he returns to court on Oct. 14 in front of King County Superior Court Judge Vernonica Alicea Galvan. The jury on Tuesday morning at the Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent also convicted Russell for second-degree assault in a separate incident earlier in the morning on Aug. 20, 2014, when a typical normal day at the busy Shell station turned into a brutal murder scene.

Carlos Gonzalez, 26, a store clerk, and David Christianson, 52, the store manager, were shot and killed on a Wednesday morning after they had asked Russell and his friend, Dale D. Lewis Jr., then 19, to leave the store because the pair had started arguments with other customers. Prosecutors alleged a fistfight broke out between Gonzalez and Lewis just outside the store at the corner of 64th Avenue South and South 212th Street.

The jury started deliberations late Monday afternoon and returned its verdict Tuesday morning. Russell was allowed to attend court in a dress suit but has remained in custody at the county jail in Kent since his arrest two years ago.

“I was elated,” Tony Deniston, the father of Gonzalez, said outside the courtroom. “It was two years and three days for this. We got him. I’m happy. I’m excited. I just can’t wait for sentencing. We were so glad after the closing arguments that it only took a couple of hours. The guy showed no remorse whatsoever. I’m so glad he’s off the streets.”

Deniston and several other relatives wore bright orange T-shirts to court in memory of Gonzalez.

“We lost our son two years and three days ago and it’s been just a hell of a time,” said Deniston, whose wife, daughter, sister and a lifelong friend also were in court. “We are just ready for this to be over. We want the sentencing to be long.”

During the five-week trial, the jury watched video of the arguments, fight and shootings captured by 11 surveillance cameras at the station.

In closing statements on Monday, prosecutors told the jury they sought the first-degree charges because Russell premeditated the killings of Gonzalez and Christianson.

Defense attorney Leta Schattauer wanted the jury to rule the killings were not premeditated, which would have meant a lesser charge of second-degree murder. She told the jury to remember what expert doctors said during the trial that Russell didn’t have the mental capacity to make a predetermined decision to kill anybody.

Jessica Berliner, a King County senior deputy prosecutor, spent nearly 80 minutes in her closing as she described a morning that led to Russell shooting the two men.

“He’s an angry, volatile man who on that day wanted people to think he was tough and some sort of gangster,” Berliner said. “He wanted people to fear him. He decided to pick a fight and to go get his gun.”

Berliner said Russell and Lewis felt disrespected at the service station and claimed racial comments were made. The pair stopped at the station in Russell’s black Cadillac to buy a can of gas for a friend who had run out of gas down the road.

But the pair caused a commotion with their loud music, comments and stares. When store employees asked the two to leave, a fistfight broke out between Lewis and Gonzalez just outside the store. Christianson attempted to break up the fight.

“There is no question he intended to kill Carlos and Dave,” Berliner said about seeking the first-degree murder convictions. “He had a gun. He shot them each three or four times. He shot them directly at their bodies. … He pointed it at each of them and he pulled the trigger over and over.”

Both employees died at the scene.

The prosecutor explained to the jury what premeditated means.

“People think of someone who had an enemy that thinks about a plan and a getaway plan, which is clearly premeditated, but all that planning is not required by the law,” she said. “It’s when you think about it for more than a moment of time. There is no required time. It’s if you pull out gun and have an opportunity to change your mind, and still do it.”

Russell had plenty of chances to change his mind, she said.

“He turned and saw the fight, he went to his car, reached inside and grabbed his gun and ran all the way back to where Carlos and Dave and Lewis were fighting,” Berliner said.

Shooter ditches gun

Detectives found the gun used in the shootings at a Burien drug house where Russell had visited and ditched the gun. Police found a black Cadillac at his home that matched the car described by witnesses and shown in the video.

Russell, who is Hispanic, admitted to Kent detectives after they arrested him later in the day in Burien after the shootings that he shot both men. Kent Police tracked down Russell through witness statements, video surveillance and his driver’s license photo. Russell said he shot the two men to stand up and protect his friend, a black man, who had been disrespected by store customers who used racist language toward his friend. And when Russell saw his friend in a fistfight, he had to step up.

“For his reason for murdering my son and Dave Christianson was a pathetic excuse that he had to protect his friend that he only knew for two days,” Deniston said.

Schattauer, the defense attorney, argued Russell didn’t intend to kill the two men. She used testimony by expert doctors, including a psychologist and a neurologist, to try to sway the jury in favor of a lesser charge of second-degree murder.

She told the jury at closing to remember about how one of the expert doctors testified that Russell had a mood disorder, psychotic disorder with disruptive thoughts and paranoia, cognitive disorder, attention deficit disorder, anxiety disorder, features of several personality disorders and substance abuse.

The attorney said when Russell saw the fight at the station, he just reacted.

“He makes a fatal decision based on his ability – his diminished abilities – and he grabs a gun and he goes and he shoots Mr. Gonzalez and Mr. Christianson,” Schattauer said. “It’s more than two hours before Mr. Russell realizes he should’ve just punched them (which he told to an officer who transported him to the police station). Mr. Russell didn’t have a grudge against Mr. Gonzalez or Mr. Christianson.”

She emphasized that Russell didn’t really know what he was doing, according to what the experts found out when they talked to Russell and gave him a number of tests.

“They said Mr. Russell was impaired,” she said. “He could not think through beforehand before shooting Carlos Gonzales and Dave Christianson what the best course of action was to take.”

Doctors also said because Russell had used meth earlier that day, he couldn’t think clearly.

Berliner told the jury that what the doctors said about Russell wasn’t enough to reduce the charge.

“It’s not enough to say someone has some sort of mental disorder,” Berliner said. “To be legally relevant, it has to be related to the commission of crime. If it’s not connected, it’s just stuff and background. It’s an explanation but not an excuse. “

She continued to counteract the defense attorney’s arguments.

“Just because the defendant has some issues, took some meth and just because he may have had an head injury (in the past), that does not mean he’s not guilty of these crimes,” Berliner said. “Nobody is saying the defendant doesn’t have issues. … But there is no evidence of records that shows he is mentally ill or impaired. He broke down the gun to hide it, he claimed the victims started it, he remembers where he parked and how much he paid for gas.”

‘Defense had nothing’

The argument by the defense didn’t impress Deniston.

“The defense to me had nothing,” he said. “Her (Schattauer) professional doctors, whatever, it was just their opinion and how they came up with that opinion made no sense to me. He had the capacity to drive down there, to go in there and pick a fight and the capacity to go back and get his gun. There were 12 points where he made that choice and he made it clearly before he shot him and you can see it on the video.

“If he would have been a man and just let my son kick his ass, we wouldn’t be here today.”

The prosecution used an assault by Russell of a woman in Burien earlier in the morning on the same day of the shootings as an indicator of his aggressive, angry mood and that he was looking to hurt somebody.

Berliner said Russell assaulted a woman at an intersection in Burien after he had cut her off in his Cadillac. The woman honked her horn, which caused Russell to get out of his car, walk toward the woman and point a gun at her before she quickly backed up her vehicle to get away. A King County Sheriff’s Office detective helped tie that assault to the Kent killings based on witnesses descriptions of the suspect in both cases.

The defense questioned the Burien woman during the trial about who actually came after her. Schattauer claimed Lewis, he friend, came out of the car with a gun and not Russell. The attorney also put on the stand a man who lived near the intersection. He said he saw a black man, Lewis, get out of the car and nobody else approached the other vehicle.

Kent and Burien police never referred any case against Lewis to prosecutors. He was not considered a suspect in the killings. Russell apparently had just met Lewis a couple of days prior to the shootings.