Author:
Capn Puss N Boots
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Date Posted: 06:31:39 07/31/09 Fri
Police: Inmate was tipped off to shooting
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By Will Richmond
Herald News Staff Reporter
Posted Jul 30, 2009 @ 09:16 PM
Last update Jul 30, 2009 @ 11:32 PM
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Fall River — Before Charles Smith’s near-lifeless body made it to Rhode Island Hospital word had already reached a jailed Mafioso associate.
According to police reports obtained in court files, when Smith arrived at Rhode Island Hospital, officer Nelson Sousa, who rode along with Smith during the transfer from St. Anne’s Hospital, was contacted by a correctional officer from Massachusetts Correctional Institute in Shirley. The correctional officer informed Sousa that Angel Peralta had told the officer that his brother was being treated at the hospital. Asked how Peralta received the information, the correctional officer told Sousa a family member had called the prison.
Sousa then advised the correctional officer that Smith and Peralta are not related and advised her to not release any further information regarding the incident to Peralta.
Peralta, who uses the street name “Shorty,” was sentenced to 27 to 33 years in prison for shooting three people in the parking lot of the Plymouth Avenue McDonald’s in February 2006.
Peralta and his brother Michael “Slick” Peralta had previously been identified as the leaders of the Mafioso street gang. Michael Peralta is serving a 12-year sentence after pleading guilty in March 2006 to narcotics charges.
The motive behind Smith’s shooting has been described by prosecutors as a gang-related territorial dispute. The attorney for Jesse Eaton, who is charged with murder following Smith’s death, sought to have Eaton held in the Barnstable County House of Correction rather than in Bristol County due to the “strong presence of young men from Fall River and New Bedford,” in the Bristol County facility. Judge Lance Garth left the decision to the Bristol County Sheriff’s Department, and spokesman Bernie Sullivan said Eaton, along with co-defendent Wigberto Sanchez Jr., who faces an accessory after the fact charge, remain in custody in Bristol County.
Sullivan said two men described as persons of interest in Smith’s shooting, Tony Almond and Peter Pearson, are also in custody at the Dartmouth jail.
While those two men have not been formally charged in relation to Smith’s shooting and are being held in relation to a June shooting on Pine Street, a woman who was in the rented Chevy Malibu with Smith at the time of the Sunday night shooting on Fifth Street identified Pearson and Almond, who goes by the street name “Yayo,” as the shooters.
“He (Smith) has been beefing with those guys. Officer, I am so upset. I’m being honest, it was Yayo, who is Tony Almond,” Kelly Andrade told police, according to reports.
Police reports also indicate that a resident in the area told police he saw a “dark-complexion male with corn rows” run up Fourth Street and tell him “Hell you need to get your kids because something is going to happen tonight.”
Eaton sported braided hair that hung below shoulder level during his arraignment in District Court Tuesday, his complexion is listed as “fair” on his arrest report.
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