Description:

San Diego, California kidnapping charge criminal defense lawyer represented the Defendant.


Dawood Salman Odish began dating B.T. in 2021. The two lived together in an apartment for about eight months and then in various hotels. B.T. has struggled with drug addiction since she was a teenager and has been in and out of jail because of the addiction. Her "drug of choice" is fentanyl, which she used "often" and "regularly." When she used fentanyl, she experienced auditory and visual hallucinations that caused her to make false accusations against family members. Odish disapproved of B.T.'s fentanyl use and got upset when she used it.

B. The Parking Lot Incident

On August 31, 2022, S.M. was driving to El Cajon when he saw B.T. waving and stopped to help her. She asked for a ride to El Cajon, and he agreed to give her one. During the ride, B.T. asked whether she "could do drugs," and when S.M. said, "sure, no problem," she smoked something on foil through a straw. B.T. then asked S.M. to take her back to where he had picked her up so that she could retrieve a bag. S.M. drove her to a retail store and parked in the lot.

B.T. exited the car to retrieve the bag, and when she returned she was on the phone arguing with somebody. B.T. told S.M. her boyfriend was very jealous. While they were talking inside the car, a pickup truck pulled up from behind and blocked the car. A man whom S.M. later identified as Odish exited the truck and pointed a handgun at S.M. through the passenger window of his car. Odish said, "You're messing with my girlfriend," and threatened to shoot and kill S.M. S.M. got out of his car and punched Odish, who then shot S.M. in the ankle. Odish drove off in his truck, and B.T. walked away.

A deputy sheriff who arrived at the parking lot in response to a report of the shooting found S.M. sitting in his car with a wounded right ankle. S.M. was taken to a hospital, where a bullet was retrieved from his ankle and given to the deputy. While he was in the hospital, S.M. was shown a photographic lineup that included Odish, but he did not identify Odish as the shooter.

A detective obtained footage from surveillance cameras at nearby businesses. The footage depicted a pickup truck that matched Odish's truck in the parking lot at the time S.M. was shot. The detective obtained telephone records that showed Odish called B.T. multiple times around the time of the shooting and his telephone connected to a tower less than a mile away from the parking lot.

C. The Mount Laguna Incident

At approximately 6:00 a.m. on September 15, 2022, Klaus Kailing was driving his pickup truck along Sunrise Highway in Mount Laguna when he noticed B.T. walking in the middle of the road waving at him. The land surrounding the road was heavily covered with brush on both sides, and there were no homes or businesses nearby. Kailing noticed B.T. was wearing no shoes, had scrapes on her legs, and had "stickers and stuff in her socks, like she had maybe been out in the brush." He slowed his truck and asked her what was going on. B.T. responded "her boyfriend had tried to attack her," "she escaped," and she was alone and needed help. Kailing called 911.

While Kailing was talking to the 911 dispatcher, a sheriff's lieutenant drove by and saw B.T. standing in the middle of the road. The lieutenant noticed B.T. was disoriented, had scratches on her body, and had twigs and pieces of brush in her hair. When the lieutenant asked B.T. what happened, she said Odish had taken her there in his pickup truck and assaulted her, but she got away from him and hid in the bushes until he drove off. The lieutenant departed when sheriff's deputies and paramedics arrived on the scene and loaded B.T. into an ambulance for transport to a hospital.

One of the sheriff's deputies interviewed B.T. in the ambulance. When the deputy asked her what happened, B.T. answered, "My boyfriend beat me." B.T. said Odish picked her up at a hotel and during the drive accused her of cheating on him and threatened to kill her. She said Odish stopped the truck multiple times during the drive, struck her repeatedly on the face and back, and dragged her by the hair. She thought he was going to shoot her. B.T. said that during one of the stops she exited the truck and ran away.

B.T. gave a more detailed version of the events of September 15, 2022, to detectives after she arrived at the hospital. She said she was in a hotel room with two men when Odish arrived in his pickup truck at around 2:00 a.m., telephoned her, and threatened to hurt everyone in the room if she did not come out. When B.T. came out, Odish asked her why she was cheating on him and threatened suicide. She got into his truck, and he threatened to kill her, repeatedly hit her, and tried to burn her leg with a cigarette. After driving for some time, Odish stopped in a cul-de-sac and B.T. tried to run away. He grabbed her by the hair; dragged her back to the truck; and hit her face, head, and back. Odish threatened to shoot B.T. if she got out of the truck. Although she did not see a gun, she knew he kept one in the truck and had seen it the previous day. Odish continued driving and kept on hitting B.T. until she opened the door, jumped out, and hid in the bushes. When Odish drove off, B.T. "flagged down two people."

The detectives asked B.T. about the August 31, 2022 shooting incident in the parking lot. She repeatedly stated she did not know S.M. and knew nothing about the shooting. B.T. also repeatedly said she was scared of Odish and he wanted her dead. She said he told her if he went to jail, he would send somebody to kill her.

D. Odish's Storage Unit

After Odish was arrested, detectives searched a storage unit he had rented. They found a red toolbox with a locked drawer that had been broken into. On a shelf, they found a handgun wrapped in a cloth, but it was not the one that was used to shoot S.M.

Detectives obtained footage from a surveillance camera at the storage facility. The footage showed Rebecca Trombly and an unidentified man removing several items from Odish's unit. The man removed a rifle case, and Trombly removed a bag that was later found at her residence and contained ammunition of the same type as that in the handgun found during the search of the unit.

A detective listened to recorded telephone calls Odish made to Trombly from jail. In one call, he said: "So I need you to go over there just to find out if they did something or not." Trombly responded she "was by there yesterday." Odish asked her whether she had gone "to the place," whether everything "was cool with it," and whether "the lock [or] anything was broken." Trombly answered she had gone and from what she could see "[e]verything look[ed] normal," but she "d[id]n't know a hundred percent" because "it's not finished yet." In a later call, Odish asked Trombly whether "everything . . . over there is safe." She responded she had "cleaned up at the job site" and was able to get "all the big batteries out of the red box," but she "couldn't find any of the small batteries when [she] needed them for the job that [she] was finishing up today." Odish said the "small ones" were "in small drawers" and one was "loose." Trombly said: "I got it.....I'll clean [up at] the job site tomorrow, and then I'll double check it again.

Outcome: Affirmed on appeal.

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