Prosecutors: Witness in Miami murder case found
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Paula Lavigne
Florida prosecutors confirmed in a hearing Friday that their key witness in the murder case of a former University of Miami football player is alive and was contacted Thursday by officers where he lives in Kentucky.
ESPN reported Thursday that, despite prosecutors stating July 17 that they tried every effort to locate 81-year-old Paul Conner and had a report from a commercial database he was dead, journalists found Conner alive at his apartment in Louisville.
Conner is the only eyewitness in the case against former Miami football player Rashaun Jones, who is facing second-degree murder charges in the 2006 shooting of teammate Bryan Pata. Jones, who was arrested in 2021, has pleaded not guilty.
Miami assistant state attorney Cristina Diamond told Florida 11th Circuit Court Judge Cristina Miranda that, after the ESPN story was published, her lead detective reached out to police in Louisville and asked them to go to Conner’s last-known address — where ESPN reporters had found him.
“They were able to make contact with Paul Conner. So at this time, what I can tell the court is that Paul Conner is alive,” Diamond said, adding that she had reviewed the officer’s body camera footage. “I think the state needs to do a little bit of further investigation. It appears that he was very confused and is not certain what the case is about.”
When ESPN reporters interviewed Conner on Aug. 25, he said he did not remember details about the case. Miranda had ruled in July that, assuming Conner was dead, the state could present jurors a videotape of prior testimony he gave in 2022 in a bond hearing in the case in lieu of having him testify in person.
If a determination is made that Conner is not competent to testify, she said, “we may still be in the same situation.”
Conner first spoke to police shortly after the Nov. 7, 2006, shooting, and he picked Jones out of a police lineup. Police reinterviewed him in 2020. Conner also recounted what he saw at the 2022 bond hearing and in a 2023 deposition with attorneys.
At the time of the shooting, Conner lived in the same apartment complex as Pata. He said during his 2022 testimony that he heard a “pop” and saw someone “jogging” away from the parking lot entrance near where Pata, a likely high pick in the 2007 NFL draft, was shot once in the head.
How the confirmation of Conner’s status affects the case, which is scheduled for trial Oct. 6, is to be determined after attorneys argued in court Friday about what steps to take next regarding questioning Conner and going over the evidence of the state’s prior efforts to find him.
Jones’ attorney Sara Alvarez told Miranda that she wanted to request a hearing to determine if prosecutors violated the rules of evidence, saying she thought the false conclusion of Conner’s death “may have been intentional.”
Diamond rebutted that accusation, saying Miami-Dade officers made multiple attempts to reach Conner.
“This is our key witness in the case. This is somebody we want,” Diamond told the judge. “The defense is accusing me of making misrepresentations to the court. Every representation made to the court was based upon a conversation with an officer who I was prepared to have testify.”
Diamond was referring to officers from the Louisville Police Department who she said went to Conner’s address over the summer and “spoke to someone but believed it was not the witness.” She said she had a copy of the body camera footage as well. She said those officers told her they also spoke to someone with the apartment’s leasing office who did not find Conner in their records.
She said they did not locate a death certificate in Kentucky but relied on the third-party commercial database that stated Conner was deceased. Jones’ counsel asked for a copy of that report along with other records that would verify the state’s efforts.
The Louisville officers did not testify Friday, as the judge decided to give the attorneys some time to correspond with each other and decide how they wanted to proceed.
ESPN had asked for records or information from the Louisville Police Department regarding efforts to locate Conner, and a department spokesman said there were no records of any officer going to Conner’s address this summer prior to a July 22 request from a former colleague who had called for a welfare check on Conner after being contacted by ESPN reporters.
ESPN made multiple requests to police and the Miami-Dade State Attorney for records of their efforts to find Conner. After initially saying they had no documents, they eventually provided an email exchange in which lead detective Juan Segovia wrote that he left 15 voicemail messages with Conner since May. Segovia added that he also sent emails to an address that officers had used with him previously. They also provided a copy of a June 6 letter addressed to Conner at his Louisville address that asked him to contact their office.
They provided an email exchange with a Louisville police officer, but it had no information about Conner or efforts to find him, and they provided a copy of a subpoena for the officer to testify. ESPN reached back out to Louisville police with the name of the officer and a request for further information and is waiting on a response.
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Mark Schlabach
Florida might be without three of its top defensive linemen when it tries to end a two-game losing streak at No. 4 Miami on Saturday night.
The Gators (1-2) will be without defensive tackles Caleb Banks and Michai Boireau, and potentially starting defensive end George Gumbs Jr., sources told ESPN’s Pete Thamel on Saturday.
Gumbs made the trip to Miami (3-0) for Saturday’s game at Hard Rock Stadium (7:30 p.m. ET, ABC) and will try to play, but sources told ESPN that he’s unlikely to go.
Gumbs has 10 tackles and a half-sack in three games.
Sources told ESPN that Boireau didn’t travel to Miami and won’t play against the Hurricanes. He has five tackles in two games and missed last week’s 20-10 loss at LSU with an undisclosed injury.
Banks has already been ruled out of the Miami game after suffering a foot injury against LSU. After missing the first two games, Banks played 29 snaps against the Tigers.
Swamp247 reported Wednesday that Banks had surgery on his foot in Birmingham, Alabama, and a timeline for his return wasn’t known.
Brendan Bett, Brien Taylor Jr. and Jamari Lyons will likely continue to get the majority of playing time up front for the Gators.
“We got a really good group. I’m excited about what I see out of the young players in the group,” Gators coach Billy Napier said. “Still enough players there to have a very effective group.”
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Jorge Castillo
NEW YORK — When New York Mets right-hander Kodai Senga agreed to be optioned to Triple-A earlier this month to work on his mechanics, the ideal scenario was that he would rejoin the club soon after he was eligible to return on Sept. 20. But that isn’t happening.
Senga told club officials on a call Friday that, despite being healthy, he is not ready to pitch at the major league level after surrendering four runs over 3⅔ innings for Triple-A Syracuse on Thursday. With the minor league season concluding Sunday, the plan instead is to have Senga face hitters in a simulated setting next Tuesday or Wednesday.
Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said the team is determining where that will take place because Senga is not allowed to be with the major league team while optioned.
Senga’s first start since volunteering for the demotion was encouraging: six innings, three hits, one run and eight strikeouts with no walks. But Thursday’s start represented a significant regression for the reset.
“Stuff-wise, [he] was down,” Mendoza said of Senga’s outing on Thursday. “Whether it was the velo, execution, the secondary pitches were not sharp. So that’s the report that I got. And then, watching film, you could see it. And that’s probably one of the reasons he’s asking for one more time to face hitters, just to kind of continue to work through those issues. So that’s what we saw.”
This isn’t the first time a healthy Senga, 32, has informed the Mets that he is not comfortable pitching in major league games while healthy. Last season, Senga cited mechanical problems multiple times as the reason for delaying his season debut until late July after a shoulder injury had healed. He then strained his left calf in his first start and didn’t pitch in the regular season again.
This year, Senga was one of the best pitchers in the majors until he strained his hamstring on June 12. He landed on the injured list with a 1.47 ERA in 73⅔ innings across 13 starts. The Mets had the best record in the majors. Then he missed nearly a month and returned to toss four scoreless innings on July 11. From there, Senga recorded a 6.56 ERA in 35⅔ innings across eight starts. He pitched into the sixth inning once and completed five innings three times. The Mets, coincidentally, floundered.
With the Mets no longer able to afford short, ineffective starts as they dropped in the standings, they asked Senga to go to Triple-A. All along, he has told the Mets he is healthy. The struggles continue to perplex the team.
“We’re asking the same thing,” Mendoza said when asked why Senga hasn’t returned to his early-season form. “Healthwise, he’s 100 percent fine. There’s no issues with him. He’s not favoring anything. We just haven’t been able to help him, whether it’s mechanicals or execution, whatever the case might be here. But we haven’t gotten there yet. So this is where we’re at. But physically he’s fine.”
Senga’s troubles combined with Sean Manaea‘s ineffectiveness and injuries to other starting pitchers have forced the Mets to thrust three rookies — Nolan McLean, Jonah Tong and Brandon Sproat — into the rotation in the heat of a playoff race.
McLean was called up first to make his major league debut on Aug. 16. Tong followed and then Sproat. McLean has shined in six starts, registering a 1.19 ERA with 40 strikeouts over 37⅔ innings, and is expected to start in the three-game wild-card series should the Mets reach the postseason. Tong’s and Sproat’s roles are less certain.
Senga’s status is even more unclear. Mendoza said Senga could “maybe” be in consideration to return to pitch in the Mets’ season-ending series against the Miami Marlins, but that would require multiple unknown steps. A year ago, the Mets aggressively made room for Senga in the postseason despite him not pitching in more than two months. Senga wound up opening two games and coming out of the bullpen in a third, totaling five innings over the three appearances. This year could be different.
“We gotta get there first,” Mendoza said. “We’re having those conversations, but it’s too early to tell.”
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