Jurors Hear Thill Called a Warrior
By Howard Pankratz
Denver Post Legal Affairs Writer
Nov. 17 - PUEBLO - White supremacist Nathan Thill fancied himself a "soldier in a race war'' the night he gunned down an African immigrant at a Downtown Denver bus stop, a prosecutor told jurors Tuesday in Pueblo.
"He considered himself a warrior,'' Chief Deputy District Attorney Mike Pellow said during opening statements in Thill's first-degree murder trial. "His enemies were people of color. Anyone in the enemy uniform was fair game.''
But defense lawyers countered that Thill has suffered from mental illness since he was a child. They said severe depression and paranoia drove him to nearly constant homicidal and self-destructive thoughts.
He embraced racist ideas because they made him feel normal, said Thill's lawyer, Sharlene Reynolds.
"You have a mentally ill child taken in by something he thought would save him,'' Reynolds said.
Thill's trial, which was moved to Pueblo from Denver because of pretrial publicity, is expected to last into early December.
Thill, 21, is accused of killing 38-year-old Oumar Dia on Nov. 18, 1997. He also is accused of shooting and paralyzing bystander Jeannie VanVelkinburgh in an attempt to eliminate her as a witness to the crime. Later, Pellow said, he tried to shoot Jim Pride, 36, a black man, after confronting him outside a Denver restaurant.
If convicted of first-degree murder, Thill could given a death sentence.
Pellow said Thill was a driven man that night, propelled by his racist ideology.
"The time to act had arrived - to act on beliefs that he held so strongly that he had symbols of them tattooed all over his body,'' Pellow said. That was a reference to tattoos Thill has depicting a Nazi storm trooper and Nazi warplanes.
With Thill the night of the killing was fellow skinhead Jeremiah Barnum, who worked with Thill at a Downtown Denver gas station, Pellow said. After leaving work, they walked around Downtown and confronted Dia at the bus stop at 17th and Welton streets, he said.
There, said the prosecutor, Thill angrily told Dia he was a "n-----,'' said he didn't belong there and asked him if he was ready to die. Then he shot Dia four times.
Dia, who worked as a bellhop at the Hyatt hotel, left a wife and three children in Senegal. He was shot twice in the chest, once in the neck and was grazed by another bullet.
Thill then turned on VanVelkinburgh and shot her once in the back.
Less than three hours later - still Downtown and still looking for trouble - Thill confronted Pride, Pellow said.
Using the same bullying manner that he had with Dia, Thill called Pride derogatory racial names, asked him if he was ready to die and said, "You don't belong in this part of town.''
He tried to fire his gun three or four times as Pride walked away. The gun was empty.
A central piece of evidence in the trial will be a confession Thill gave to KMGH-Channel 7 shortly after his arrest.
"I see the black guy at the bus stop and thought how he did not really belong there,'' Thill told the station.
"How easy it would be to take him out right there. It really didn't seem like much to me. In a war, anybody caught in an enemy uniform should be taken out,'' he said.
Defense lawyers have acknowledged that Thill shot Dia but will argue that he could not have formed the intent necessary to be convicted of first-degree murder.
Attorney Reynolds said Thill had repeatedly been diagnosed as mentally ill since he was 11.
The worst thing that ever happened to him, said Reynolds, was when he was taken out of a mentalhealth facility and placed in a regular prison for youths - the Lookout Mountain School for Boys. He had been sent there for fighting with another boy, Reynolds said. During his stay there, he was exposed to the beliefs of the hatefilled skinheads and "brainwashed,'' she said.
In the skinheads, she said, Thill found acceptance and "family.''
They made Thill believe he was "powerful'' and "superior,'' she said.
Reynolds told the jury that the only way they can convict Thill of first-degree murder is if they find that Thill shot Dia "after deliberation.''
That means that the shooting was not only "intentional'' but also that the decision to commit the shooting was done "after the exercise of reflection and judgment.''
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