Anchorage Daily News

Police never found the guns. There were no incriminating fingerprints or DNA. Witnesses, once they got to court, changed the stories they told police.

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Clayton Nai

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Norman Fagafaga

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A hundred people could have seen the 2006 shooting at Anchorage Football Stadium that erupted after a hard hit during a pickup football game. Bystanders scrambled for safety and one man, Daniel Leituala, was left bleeding on the field. Investigators say five weapons were fired that day, leaving more than 50 shell casings on the turf.

But just who fired the guns has not been an easy question to answer. In the weeks-long trial of two suspected shooters -- Clayton Nai and Norman Fagafaga -- exactly what happened remains clouded by conflicting testimony that a jury, which began deliberating Tuesday afternoon, will have to sort out.

Prosecutor John Novak argued Nai and Fagafaga, along with a third shooter, Kalani Maalona, were part of "a crew," or gang called "Norman's Boys." Maalona, originally charged with the other men, took a plea deal that reduced his charges and allowed him to avoid trial. He will be sentenced in February.

The two others are being tried under the "accomplice liability theory," that means each can be found guilty either for committing the crimes or for supporting someone else in committing the crimes. All the jurors don't have to agree on what exactly happened, Novak explained during closing arguments Tuesday.

The men came armed to the night's game with a plan to pick a fight, Novak said. They weren't regulars at the weekend games. There was "history" between them and some of the players that included a shooting incident, he said.

"Is there gang stuff going on? You bet," Novak said.

Fagafaga picked a fight on the field and made a "racial remark," Novak said. Maalona, strategically positioned in the stands with his gun, heard it and started laug.hing. Then he pulled out his gun and started shooting in the air.

Fagafaga and Nai got their guns and started shooting at people on the field. They didn't count on other players being armed, but when others returned fire, they ran, escaping in a car, Novak argued.

Later, witnesses -- Leituala, his brother Donald "BJ" Fruean, his cousin Kuini "Boi" Fruean and another player, Wills John-Baptiste -- identified the men on trial as the shooters.

But at trial, everyone except Kuini said they'd identified the wrong people. Novak told the jury the witnesses balked because they had been threatened.

Defense attorneys, in their closings, seized on the recanting witnesses, saying the waffling was a sign the prosecution's case was unraveling. Shelley Chaffin, who was representing Fagafaga, held up a pinkish poinsettia plant to illustrate what she said she was going to do to Novak's argument.

"We will pick petal by petal, the problems" she said. "In the end, you will see the state's case is nothing more than a dead and dying stem."

Chaffin noted that the witnesses who recanted said they'd been pressured to ID Fagafaga and Nai by their families. Even Kuini Fruean said his view of the events wasn't clear.

"Not one of them gave this jury a clear statement about who was shooting," she said.

And, there was no evidence that Fagafaga was in a gang, she said.

"When something doesn't fit the state's theory, they make it up," she said.

Some people at the scene told police that the shooters were black, she said, not Pacific Islanders like the defendants. At the end of her hour-long argument, she plucked the last leaf from poinsettia plant and tossed it in a trash can by the jury box. The denuded stem, still planted in a green foil-wrapped pot, sat on the defense table for the rest of the trial.

Nai's attorney, Adam Bartlett, said the jury should focus on witness credibility and what they knew about human nature. The men who changed their stories never felt threatened; they felt guilty for fingering the wrong people. They talked about being pressured by their families and elders to identify someone and said they were influenced by rumors and media accounts. Leituala said he learned the names from the newspaper before talking to investigators. Kuini Fruean was confused and his family said he was easily influenced, Bartlett said.

The cause of the altercation wasn't clear, but the evidence showed "whatever happened that day, it wasn't gang-related or racially motivated," he said. With witnesses who admitted to lying earlier about what they saw, a jury couldn't find his client guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. He called Novak's theory a "fantasy."

Novak had a chance to rebut the defense before the case went to the jury. He asked jurors to use common sense and to rely on statements witnesses made during the police investigation. The defense offered no real, alternate theory of what occurred.

"I guess these guns just fired themselves?"

That wasn't true, he said.

"This shooting happened for a reason."

Find Julia O'Malley online at adn.com/contact/jomalley or call 257-4591.

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