Trial date set for Bay Area rapper Lul G accused of a 2019 murder

A Solano County Superior Court judge reset a jury trial date for a 23-year-old Vallejo rapper accused of fatally shooting a 26-year-old Vallejo man more than three years ago in Fairfield.

George Harris, aka Lul G, who appeared in Department 9 on Monday for a trial management conference, heard Judge Carlos R. Gutierrez vacate a previously scheduled Oct. 12 trial but then confirmed it would begin at 10 a.m. Oct. 13 in the Justice Center in Fairfield.

Court records also show Harris was scheduled for a readiness conference at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, a trial management conference at 9 a.m. Oct. 12, and the trial the following day.

The trial, including jury selection, is expected to last four weeks, according to court documents.

Solano County Sheriff’s Department records indicate Harris, a rising star in the Bay Area and national rap scene when accused of fatally shooting Rashied Flowers on July 24, 2019, was arrested on Sept. 21 in Clark County, Nevada.

Harris is being held without bail at the Stanton Correctional Facility in Fairfield. He pleaded not guilty at his jail arraignment on Sept. 23.

Rolling Stone magazine and Pitchfork and XXL, among other websites, first reported the arrest.

Court records show that the Solano County District Attorney’s Office filed its complaint against Harris, who has a prior felony conviction, on Aug. 29.

Videos screened during the second day of a June 2021 preliminary hearing for Harris showed the victim, wounded and hunched over in pain, entering the kitchen of a Fairfield home, and the alleged shooter briefly entering the kitchen, screaming while looking at him.

Questioned on the witness stand by Deputy District Attorney Bill Ainsworth, who leads the prosecution, Fairfield Police Sgt. Robert Piro described what was happening in several clips retrieved from cameras in or near the Venetian Drive residence.

In the first, as Piro narrated, a Ring.com camera on the five-bedroom home’s front porch captured Harris, dressed in all white, walking toward the front door, the handle of a semi-automatic handgun visible as he walked into the home after two other men in the early evening hours of July 24.

In the second clip, Flowers can be seen entering the kitchen, wounded, then walking to a chair and sitting down just before the defendant enters the kitchen from the garage, where the shooting reportedly occurred.

And the third, video captured from a camera at a nearby residence, showed people loading Flowers into a white Range Rover parked on the street in front of the Venetian Drive home.

Piro, a member of the department’s investigations unit at the time of the shooting, testified that Harris and others had gathered at the home to possibly record a rap video.

But Flowers wanted to play an unspecified “dice game” and the others, including Harris, joined in the gambling, which occurred in the garage.

As Harris lost money to Flowers, then allegedly snorted cocaine “off his hand,” said Piro, an altercation between the two ensued with Harris, added Piro, calling Flowers “a bitch.”

As passions rose, people in the garage believed Harris and Flowers were going to start a fight, he said. At some point, Harris is believed to have fired a single shot, striking Flowers in the abdomen.

Once inside the kitchen, others placed Flowers in a wheelchair. But as he was being shuttled out toward the garage, the wheelchair hit a door jamb and Flowers fell onto the garage floor, said Piro.

As Ainsworth continued with his direct questioning, Harris’ defense attorney, Claire J. White, frequently objected, calling some of Ainsworth’s questions “leading” and his statements based on “hearsay.”

Judge Carlos R. Gutierrez often sustained White’s objections, forcing Ainsworth to modify his line of questioning each time.

Piro testified that Harris, who reportedly had been drinking alcohol on the day of the shooting, was “screaming and crying” after the shooting and said that he was sorry.

Some weeks passed before Piro heard that Harris had been arrested in Las Vegas on Sept. 10, and was in the Clark County Detention Facility. He flew there the same day and Harris was later extradited to Solano County.

Piro said that Harris, before his arrest, had been tracked, based on cellphone pings, to a Holiday Inn Express in Las Vegas, where FBI Task Force investigators spotted the defendant outside the motel.

On the first day of the hearing, a witness, Latoya Gilmore, testified that she did not see the shooting but found Flowers “on the ground (in the garage) with people standing around crying.”

Gilmore testified that she called 911 but decided to drive Flowers to NorthBay Medical Center in Fairfield.

Ainsworth asked Gilmore if she believed Harris was intoxicated.

She was unsure, but added, “I know they were drinking; there was alcohol there.”

“Was George behaving differently than anyone else?” Ainsworth asked.

“He was probably the most upset,” replied Gilmore.

Shortly afterward, Gutierrez recessed the proceedings because she became deeply distressed and ceased responding to Ainsworth.

Returning to the courtroom, White, in her cross-examination, got Gilmore to concede that she had never seen her client be violent with anyone and observed “no fight or physical altercation” when she pulled up to the residence in her vehicle. And Gilmore testified she had never seen Harris under the influence of any drugs other than alcohol.

Gilmore said Flowers and Harris had been friends and had never seen either one angry toward the other.

Afterward, Ainsworth called Dr. Arnold Josselson, the longtime Fairfield pathologist who performs autopsies, to the witness stand.

Upon examining the body two days after the shooting, Josselson said a “single gunshot wound” to Flowers’ body was fatal, with the “medium-caliber” bullet passing through parts of the small intestine and ending up in his right hip area. The bullet also pierced one of Flowers’ two iliac arteries, the arteries that split off from the aorta, the human body’s main artery, with the victim dying from loss of blood.

On June 26, 2020, White informed Gutierrez that her client may not be able to understand the proceedings against him or help in his defense. She petitioned the judge for a mental competency report.

On July 1, Gutierrez suspended criminal proceedings against Harris, ordered a mental competency examination, and appointed a psychologist or psychiatrist to examine him.