Man to face trial in 2002 Pearl Seau slaying

By: TERI FIGUEROA - Staff Writer | Tuesday, December 13, 2005 11:37 PM PST ∞

VISTA ---- The man suspected of killing Oceanside resident Pearl Seau confessed to the shooting shortly after his arrest in Texas this summer, three years after the slaying, an police detective testified Tuesday.

The case against Robert McIntosh will head to trial, a judge ruled Tuesday, on charges that McIntosh shot to death the 32-year-old Seau and allegedly did so for the benefit of his Oceanside-based street gang.

McIntosh faces up to two life sentences if he is convicted of the 2002 slaying, a killing that added fuel to an already bitter gang rivalry in the coastal city.

Seau was not a gang member, according to testimony in McIntosh's preliminary hearing Tuesday, but a few gang members may have frequented her Oceanside home, where the shooting took place.

Seau, a relative of former Chargers linebacker Junior Seau, was shot Nov. 12, 2002, while standing in her garage with her fiance at the Valley View apartment complex in the 400 block of Vandegrift Boulevard.

Detectives arrested McIntosh, 24, in Corpus Christi, Texas, in August on suspicion of murdering Seau. Police allege McIntosh was a member of an Oceanside gang that was a rival of a Samoan gang.

On Tuesday, Oceanside police detective Kelly Deveney testified McIntosh confessed shortly after his arrest.

She said McIntosh told her that, in the hours before the shooting, he was sitting on an Oceanside bench when members of a rival gang jumped him and tried to throw him into oncoming traffic.

At some point thereafter, Deveney said the defendant told her, McIntosh headed to a liquor store and then to the home of members of his own gang.

Fellow gang members allegedly told McIntosh that he had to retaliate for the attack on the street.

The detective said the gang members supposedly handed McIntosh a gun and drove him around to look for members of the rival gang.

Finding none, they decided that McIntosh should shoot at whoever was in Pearl Seau's open and lit garage, since they believed it to be a place where their rivals congregated.

Deveney said McIntosh told her that he walked up to the garage, held out the gun, turned his head in the opposite direction and fired blindly.

Seau was hit twice in the back, prosecutor Tom Manning said.

Seau's fiance, Junior Mola, who was in the garage but not hit by gunfire, got a look at the gunman.

As a matter of coincidence, Mola happened to stop at the same liquor store at the same time as McIntosh had earlier that day ---- and told police that he recognized the man from the liquor store as the triggerman in his garage.

On cross-examination by defense attorney Ron Vanesian, Deveney admitted that Mola identified a person other than McIntosh out of a photo lineup.

But, Deveney said, McIntosh's picture was not in the photo array given to Mola. She also said McIntosh bears a "close resemblance" to the man Mola identified in the photo array.

McIntosh allegedly fled to Las Vegas in the days following the 2002 shooting, Deveney said.

Police suspicions that McIntosh was the gunman grew months later, when police recovered the gun used in the Seau shooting.

Police obtained the weapon after another alleged member of McIntosh's gang used it in a 2003 shooting at a Carlsbad mall. Police said the 16-year-old shooter in the Carlsbad attack said he'd gotten the gun from McIntosh.

When Oceanside police caught up with and confronted McIntosh four months ago, he was working as a gardener for the city of Corpus Christi.

Attending the hearing Tuesday were close friends and family members of the slain woman, who they said was not involved in gangs. Two of the women wore shirts bearing a photo of "Pearly."

"I just want him to pay for what he did," said Seau's friend Holly Meyers. "We just want closure. We hurt every day. We want him to feel the pain we are feeling."

McIntosh's trial is set for March 7.

Contact staff writer Teri Figueroa at (760) 740-3517 or tfigueroa@nctimes.com.