Arheel's Uncle
Senior Reporter
'It probably looks like I'm a monster': Costco carjacker gets 45 years, faces murder charge
Moments after he'd pumped multiple rounds in Derrick Cash's small body and left the sixth grader to die in a deserted, swampy tract of Michoud Boulevard, Tyrese Harris felt regret,
www.nola.com
'It probably looks like I'm a monster': Costco carjacker gets 45 years, faces murder charge
- BY MISSY WILKINSON | Staff writer
- Jun 27, 2023
Tyrese Harris
Photo provided by OPSO
Moments after he'd pumped multiple rounds in Derrick Cash's small body and left the sixth grader to die in a deserted, swampy tract of Michoud Boulevard, Tyrese Harris felt regret, he told New Orleans police.
Not for killing the 12-year-old. But for failing to take out his co-conspirator, Tyree "Teezy" Conerly.
"I knew I should have hit him," Harris told ATF agent Vincent Liberto in a three-hour statement taken shortly after he was arrested on Feb. 6, 2022. "Nobody would know nothing right now. I wouldn't have to talk about this."
New details of Cash's slaying, plus multiple carjacking incidents for which Harris pleaded guilty in February, surfaced Tuesday at his sentencing in federal court in New Orleans.
Among Harris' victims: real estate agent Kelleye Rhein, who suffered a fractured skull, brain bleeds and broken bones in her right arm after Harris carjacked her while she pumped gas at Costco, then dragged her for 40 feet.
U.S. District Judge Jay C. Zainey sentenced Harris to 45 years in federal prison, siding with Assistant U.S. Attorney Inga Petrovich, who petitioned the court for upward variance in Harris' sentencing due to the severity of his crimes.
Derrick Cash
Photo from family of Derrick Cash
During a heated, expletive-laced back-and-forth with the judge, Harris, now 20, vacillated between sorrow for his victims and anger.
"It probably looks like I'm a monster, but if you get to know me, I'm a cool and fun person to be around," Harris told Zainey, who was appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush. "Everyone has a side where you're tripping. If you don't have that side, you aren't human."
"Everyone has a side of carjacking and theft?" Zainey asked.
"You don't know me, so don't make it seem like I'm a f***ed up individual," Harris replied. "That shit's sad, son. ... I know you're in control of my life, but I don't hold my tongue for nobody."
Harris' attorney, Michael Kennedy, expressed disappointment in the sentence, citing Harris' traumatic childhood and lack of opportunity. He also expressed sympathy for the victims.
"We realize this affected the entire community," Kennedy said after the sentencing.
The carjacking timeline
During the hearing, prosecutors illustrated Harris' monthslong crime spree with exhibits that included crime scene photographs from Cash's homicide, coroner diagrams of the boy's 11 bullet wounds and dashboard camera footage from a high-speed chase involving Harris in a stolen Toyota Camry.They allege the carjacking spree started on Aug. 19, 2021, when an armed Harris demanded a victim's silver Toyota Camry in the 600 block of Washington Avenue. Two days later, New Orleans police spotted the vehicle and gave chase. Three occupants, including Harris, crashed in a New Orleans East canal, fled on foot and were apprehended in Lake Pontchartrain's shallow waters. Police found a firearm, ski mask and Harris' phone with evidence to link him to the carjacking in the vehicle. They also found two firearms discarded by the suspects as they fled.
On Jan. 18, 2022, Harris opened fire at a busy gas station near the traffic circle in the 700 block of Howard Avenue when a 44-year-old man he attempted to carjack pulled out his own gun. Harris fired seven shots, but no one was hurt. He said he was protecting his accomplice: his brother.
"I don't want nobody to take my brother’s life," Harris told police. As he fled, he dropped his cellphone. Harris blamed the getaway driver's lack of skill for the fumble. "My phone fell out of my car. She kept swerving. Stupid ho."
Police found evidence on the phone that linked Harris to Cash's homicide, a little more than two weeks prior. But before Harris was booked, he'd leave two more carjacking victims in his wake.
On Jan. 31, 2022, he botched a carjacking at Costco, arriving with other perpetrators in a stolen Nissan Pathfinder and attempting to take a woman's 2020 Mercedes-Benz as she prepared to pump gas.
"I was trying to get that ho purse," he told police. "I knew Benz a tracker."
Fortunately, the woman did not fight back against Harris when she evaded the theft and carjacking.
"(She'd) gotten her whole face shot if she would have shot that gas at me," Harris told police.
The next day, Harris returned to the same Costco in the same stolen Pathfinder and brutally carjacked Rhein. Looking back at her crumpled, bleeding form from the getaway car, Harris compared her position to a chalk outline of a dead body, Zainey said shortly before handing down the stiff sentence.
"To find out she was in the ICU with...broken bones and skin scraped so severely from being dragged, I knew almost certainly she would be scarred forever," Rhein's husband Jason wrote in a victim impact statement. "She slowly came back little by little, though I can say she will never be the same."
The killing of Derrick Cash
Harris told police that on Jan. 3, 2022, he followed Cash and Conerly to the 14000 block of Michoud Boulevard. Harris drove a Honda Pilot. Cash and Conerly rode a short distance ahead in a black Jeep — both vehicles stolen from the Pontchartrain Hotel's valet service."It was basically a setup," ATF agent Vincent Liberto said at the sentencing. "Conerly brought Cash to the location, where Harris and Conerly shot and killed him."
Police learned Cash was the young cousin of Bobby Cash, with whom Harris and his family had feuded. After Harris' sentencing, his mother alleged Cash's family shot up her home in Treme in 2017.
Harris initially said he shot Cash because the boy tried to take his gun from his waistband. But the evidence didn't bear that story out.
Police found Cash dead on the pavement — hands tucked in his pockets, face turned up to meet the wan January sun, body riddled with bullet wounds from calves to head. Conerly and Cash had ditched the Jeep at the scene and fled in the Honda.
Shortly after the killing, Harris sent a text: "He a dead boy."
Murder trial looms
U.S. Marshals and NOPD officers arrested Harris at his girlfriends' parents house in the 1500 block of Milton Street the following month. The parents told authorities they had no idea Harris was in their daughter's bedroom, where police found a firearm under the mattress.Roughly a year later, Harris pleaded guilty to multiple carjacking charges from the rash of crimes committed between August 2021 and February 2022, a time when gruesome carjacking spikes in New Orleans terrified its citizenry.
Harris is still awaiting trial on the second-degree murder charge in connection with Cash's killing. That trial is scheduled for July 6 in Orleans Parish Criminal District Court. If found guilty, he faces life in prison.
Last edited: