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LAS VEGAS (AP) — A Nevada judge made it clear Thursday that he was angry to have to postpone a closely watched murder and conspiracy trial for two co-defendants charged with killing a Las Vegas mom in a shootout in a neighborhood cul-de-sac.
Attorneys for 20-year-old Erich Milton Nowsch Jr. told Clark County District Court Judge Michael Villani they don't think they have received all the evidence that police collected, and they couldn't be ready for trial Oct. 19.
A lawyer for co-defendant Derrick Andrews had said Tuesday he'll be involved in an unrelated previously scheduled trial in two weeks.
Villani rescheduled the Nowsch-Andrews trial for March 28, warning the defense teams that he won't reset the date again.
Andrews, 27, is accused of driving while Nowsch allegedly shot Tammy Meyers outside her home last Feb. 12.
Each has pleaded not guilty to charges that also include attempted murder and discharging a firearm from a vehicle. Each could face life in prison if convicted.
Andrews isn't accused of handling a gun, but he faces the same charges as Nowsch under laws making a getaway driver culpable for a crime committed by an accomplice.
Family members and police initially cast the shooting as road rage after Meyers' 15-year-old daughter told investigators she and her mom had been threatened by an aggressive driver who blocked their way home from a late-night driving lesson.
Evidence suggests the shooting actually stemmed from a series of coincidences and mistakes, and that it came after Tammy Meyers dropped her daughter at home and went back out to drive around the neighborhood with her adult son, Brandon Meyers, and his gun in the family's green Buick Park Avenue sedan.
Nowsch and Andrews aren't believed to have been involved in any initial road confrontation.
Nowsch told police he called Andrews to pick him up because he thought the green car driven slowly by Kristal Meyers and Tammy Meyers in a school parking lot was following him as he walked in a nearby park, and the people in it meant to make good on threats to do him harm.
Nowsch, who is unemployed and lived with his single mother and her infant daughter, has been characterized by a prosecutor as a neighborhood marijuana and anxiety-medication dealer who hung out at the park near the school.
He told police he knew the Meyers family and didn't mean to kill Tammy Meyers.
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