Lawyer asks judge to toss felonies

Suspended detective, former police union chief in court

Lawyers for a suspended Las Vegas detective and a former high-ranking director of the police union asked a judge on Wednesday to throw out felony charges against them.

Michael Ramirez, who worked as a legislative lobbyist with the Las Vegas Police Protective Association, and Lawrence Rinetti, who joined Metro in 2006, were indicted in March on charges tied to the detective’s relationship with a drug-addicted stripper.

Defense attorney Tony Sgro, who represents Rinetti, argued that questions from prosecutors during testimony to a grand jury were peppered with “moral judgment” and that the 24-year-old woman, Gabriella Dilorenzo, leveled phony accusations against Rinetti in order to keep herself out of jail.

Early last year, prosecutors said, Rinetti was at a drug bust on Las Vegas Boulevard North, where he stole 1.2 ounces of methamphetamine, which he provided to Dilorenzo to sell. She testified that she told Rinetti that she sold the drug.

Sgro said Dilorenzo’s testimony was unreliable and pointed to previous interviews with police in which Dilorenzo initially said Rinetti did not give her drugs, but later changed her story.

“So the drug charges, at a minimum, should go back (to the grand jury) for presentation of exculpatory evidence to actually the grand jurors to understand the extent to which and how adamant Ms. Dilorenzo was that Mr. Rinetti never gave her any drugs,” Sgro said during a hearing that lasted several hours and was briefly interrupted by an earthquake that rattled the 14th

Listed as John Doe at hospital

The call from Going’s father came in late May 2019. Anderson said Going, who “always called,” failed to meet up with his dad, who was immediately worried.

Friends of friends began searching until they found a John Doe at Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center who matched Going’s description. Anderson, who was living in New York at the time, jumped on a plane to Las Vegas.

Going had suffered a head injury, although the hospital workers didn’t know that at first. On May 30, a security officer at a strip mall in the 900 block of East Sahara Avenue, near Maryland Parkway, called 911 to report an unconscious man who was unable to answer questions.

Metropolitan Police Department homicide Lt. Ray Spencer said hospital workers first assumed the man was just too intoxicated. But after Going fell off a gurney at the hospital, staff noticed he had a significant head injury, Spencer said.

Going died on June 7, 2019. The Clark County coroner’s office called Spencer’s homicide detectives after his death, but the arrest warrant wasn’t signed until June 1.

“The main holdup on this was simply waiting on the coroner to make a ruling,” Spencer said in May.

Police needed a signed document from the coroner’s office to issue a warrant, he said. In March, the office ruled Going’s death a homicide due to blunt force injuries of the head and related complications.

The arrest warrant indicated that Going suffered serious brain bleeding and a “head fracture.”

Although court and jail records show that no arrests have been made in the case, the arrest warrant identifies the suspect as George Kahaleua-doctorello of Pahrump.

Police wrote in the warrant that “detectives made attempts to contact Kahaleua-doctorello regarding his account of the aforementioned details and have had no contact from him.”

A bartender and a former employee at the Badlands Bar — the country-themed gay bar Going was found outside of — both told police about Kahaleua-doctorello, according to the warrant.

Surveillance footage from outside the bar showed “what appeared to be the victim being hit or thrown to the ground” by a man police believe to be Kahaleua-doctorello, the document said.

According to the warrant, the footage also showed Kahaleua-doctorello and a friend walk out of the bar after Going was hurt, and the two “appeared to be talking further about the incident, re-enacting it.”

The men stood over Going while he was unconscious, but it was a security guard at the Green Door — an adult club in the same shopping center — who later called police.

A bartender told police that the night Going was hurt, a former employee visited the Badlands Bar with a man he knew as “Keoki.”

The bartender said that during the night, Keoki left the bar alone and said he was going to the Green Door. The bartender told police that “Keoki came back into the bar and told (the former employee) that some guy had run up on him and Keoki hit him,” according to the warrant.

The former employee also spoke with detectives and identified “Keoki” as George Kahaleua-doctorello, the warrant said.

“(The former employee) told detectives that Kahaleua-doctorello did not describe an altercation or fight,” according to the warrant. “Kahaleua-doctorello said the male walked up on him, asked for a light to a cigarette and then got ‘handsy,’ as in poking and touching him.”

Before he was hurt, surveillance footage showed Going talking to people in the street “in a non-violent way, appearing to be asking for something, possibly cigarettes,” according to the warrant.

Because Kahaleua-doctorello and his friend did not tell paramedics that Going was hurt, he was “not initially treated for the injuries” at the hospital, the warrant said.

‘A very good boy’

May 31 was Going’s birthday. He would have been 44. Anderson said he and Going grew up like brothers in Huntington Beach, California.

Going was fiercely private about his personal life and close with his family, Anderson said. He was more introverted than your average “theater kid.”

Mary Anderson, Going’s godmother and Kurt Anderson’s mother, said Going was an adorable child who wanted to be the best at everything he did. She said she helped raise Going alongside her son, and he sent her a present every Mother’s Day.

“He just was a good boy,” she said. “He was a very good boy, and he was kind.”

When Going was in high school, Kurt Anderson persuaded him to perform during a talent show. It’s when Anderson realized his quiet friend had a beautiful voice.

“From that point on, he caught the bug,” Anderson said.

During Going’s funeral, before his ashes were spread off of the Southern California coast, his family played a recording of him singing the same song he sang at the talent show — “Bring Him Home” from the musical “Les Miserables.”

Kurt Anderson said it has been frustrating feeling like no one outside Going’s circle of family and friends cared about his death.

“It’s not like we were gunning for some big arrest, but you just want something more meaningful out of a tragic situation,” he said.

Contact Katelyn Newberg at knewberg@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0240. Follow @k_newberg on Twitter.