'It probably looks like I'm a monster': Costco ARMED carjacker of WF gets 45 years, faces murder charge, he's sorry he didn't kill his partner

[Arheel's Uncle]

'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,

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'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.

 

[Arheel's Uncle]

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Costco carjacking victim: I'm 'pretty beat up...but I'm alive. That's the good news'​

• BY KEITH SPERA | Staff writer
• Feb 2, 2022
• 

Customers purchase fuel at Costco in New Orleans on Wednesday, February 2, 2022. (Photo by Brett Duke, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate)

The Costco gas station is seen in New Orleans on Wednesday, February 2, 2022. (Photo by Brett Duke, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate)

After showing two Mid-City houses to potential buyers and going to lunch with her husband on Tuesday, Realtor Kelleye Rhein stopped at the Costco Wholesale off South Carrollton Avenue to buy gas.
It was just before 3 p.m. She’d filled up at that same Costco a “million” times.
But as she pumped gas from the passenger side of her SUV, a thief slipped behind the wheel and drove off.

Rhein was dragged across the parking lot and left bloodied and semi-conscious. She suffered a fractured skull and vertebrae, a broken cheekbone and abrasions down the right side of her body.

After spending Tuesday night in University Medical Center’s intensive care unit, she was released Wednesday.
“I’m pretty beat up,” Rhein, 45, said after arriving home, noting that her hair was still matted with blood. “There are marks all along my body and face. I’m feeling rough, but I’m alive — that’s the good news.”

The trauma to her head affected her short-term memory. In the hours after the injury, Rhein couldn’t recollect what she’d done that morning. By Wednesday afternoon, her memories had started to return, though she still couldn’t recall details of the carjacking itself.

Because her SUV’s gas tank is on the passenger side, she typically opens a passenger side door and sits inside while the gas is pumping. She’s not sure if the carjacker pushed her out of the vehicle, or if she was halfway in or out when he accelerated.

The SUV’s wheels didn’t run over her, she said. She sustained her injuries from being knocked down and dragged by her own vehicle an estimated 40 feet to the exit of the Costco lot.
A day later, Rhein was still processing how the carjacker “didn’t give a s--- that he was hurting me, and kept going.”

Dr. Aarti Pais, who was getting gas at the Costco at the same time as Rhein, and other customers rushed to her side, covered her with a jacket and tried to keep her conscious until an ambulance and police arrived.

Rhein’s husband, Jason, owns a video production company that counts local festivals and music venues among its clients. He was on a Zoom call with a client Tuesday afternoon when he got three calls in quick succession from the same unknown number.

It was a New Orleans police detective, calling to tell him Kelleye had been hurt in a carjacking and had been taken by ambulance to a hospital.

“My heart dropped,” Jason Rhein recalled. “This is my wife, the love of my life. We’ve been through so much together. We’d just had a nice birthday weekend. And then this was so shocking.”

Initial scans indicated she might need brain surgery, Jason said, which was “terrifying.” After follow-up scans hours later, doctors were more optimistic that surgery wouldn’t be needed.

Still, she faces a long recovery. The fractures to her vertebrae, skull and cheek must be monitored. Her forehead and nose, along with her right cheek, shoulder, arm, hip and knee, are scraped raw. She suffered soft-tissue injuries to her right hand.

“Right now I’m so relieved to have her home in her own bed where we can take care of her and help her get through this,” Jason Rhein said.

Police recovered Rhein’s stolen SUV later Tuesday in the 1400 block of Lafitte Avenue, near the intersection of Orleans and North Claiborne Avenue. The rearview mirror had been torn out, but otherwise it appeared undamaged, Jason Rhein said. His wife's purse, wallet and cellphone were gone, but her laptop was still in the vehicle.

The couple’s 12-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter spent Tuesday night at a friend’s house, then went to school Wednesday. They were finally reunited with their injured mother that afternoon.



“It was an emotional moment,” Jason said. "My son is like me. He tries to be strong, and he comforted her, but I know it was painful for him to see her like that. My daughter cried a lot. We all had a good cry together. But they’re thankful for her to be home with them.”
Being carjacked in broad daylight along a busy street in a Costco parking lot “makes me terrified for my family and for my children’s future,” Kelleye Rhein said. “How long can things go on like this?”

Both she and her husband have built their own businesses in New Orleans. But their first-hand brush with violent crime, along with the rash of similarly brazen carjackings and shootings, has them reconsidering their commitment.

“We love our city, we love the people and the relationships that we’ve built here, and we’d hate to think of losing that,” Jason Rhein said. “But when you can’t feel safe even going to pump gas at Costco at 3 in the afternoon without the fear of getting carjacked, that makes you second-guess things.”

 

[Arheel's Uncle]

Realtor Kelleye Rhein

Kelleye Rhein - NEW ORLEANS, LA Real Estate Agent | realtor.com®

Find real estate agent & Realtor® Kelleye Rhein in NEW ORLEANS, LA on realtor.com®, your source for top rated real estate professionals.

www.realtor.com

A Louisiana native, Kelleye Rhein is a realtor with Rêve Realtors in New Orleans. Kelleye was
awarded Top Producer for her production in 2016 and 2017. She was also awarded a Gold Level
achievement award in 2017 for her production amongst the entire Gulf States region.

 

[Arheel's Uncle]

Being carjacked in broad daylight along a busy street in a Costco parking lot “makes me terrified for my family and for my children’s future,” Kelleye Rhein said. “How long can things go on like this?”

Both she and her husband have built their own businesses in New Orleans. But their first-hand brush with violent crime, along with the rash of similarly brazen carjackings and shootings, has them reconsidering their commitment.

WHITE FLIGHT RISING.