Onetime pal goes on trial in killing of MMA fighter
Defense says shooter had been beaten twice before he opened fire.
WEST PALM BEACH — The two young men who lived next to Robin Freid’s Palm Beach Shores apartment had a bad habit of making too much noise when they came home in the middle of the night.
Still, Freid told a Palm Beach County jury Wednesday, the way they screamed on the night of Thanksgiving two years ago — “like they were outside at a park or something” — was enough to wake her up completely. She didn’t know then that less than 20 minutes later, she’d be standing in her neighbors’ doorway just inches from where one of them, MMA fighter Stan Stanisclasse, lay fatally wounded by a single gunshot from Darrell Telisme’s gun.
“Someone was asking them to open the door and then there was a loud bang. I thought a window was broken,” Freid, the first witness in Telisme’s murder trial Wednesday, said of the moments before she discovered her neighbor’s body that night.
No one, neither prosecutors nor Get news from Palm Beach County courtrooms at Telisme’s defense attorney, Scott Skier, disputes that Telisme was the one who killed the 23-yearold up-and-coming fighter.
The only question for jurors in the first-degree murder trial will be why. Assistant State Attorneys Reid Scott and Kristen Grimes say Telisme gunned down his rival in cold blood after losing a fight to him earlier that night.
Skier said there was not one but three fights that night. By the time Telisme pulled out a gun and shot his one-time friend, he was acting in self-defense from two lethal weapons: Stanisclasse’s fists.
“When you hear what happened that night, I think your thoughts will be: ‘With friends like these, who needs enemies?’” Skier told jurors in opening statements Wednesday, later adding: “My client was in a situation that if he didn’t do anything, he would be killed.”
According to arrest reports, the bickering between the two began over which of them was the better fighter. The two had met at Elite Boxing in suburban West Palm Beach in 2011, but Telisme remained an amateur while Stanisclasse went pro and had a 9-0 record at the time of his death.
Telisme, detectives said, later told them that the first fistfight happened near a pizza restaurant in West Palm Beach, and Stanisclasse, with a background in mixed martial arts and wrestling aside from boxing, got the best of him. Skier on Wednesday told jurors the two were terribly outmatched, describing Stanisclasse as a well-trained fighter and Telisme as “just someone who goes to the gym to stay out of trouble.”
A second fight, according to Telisme, happened after Stanisclasse, his apartment mate Dexter Dunbar and Telisme continued celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday at a bar. Stanisclasse beat Telisme a second time.
After that, Scott and Grimes say Telisme went to Stanisclasse’s apartment to kill him. Skier said Telisme’s goal was to collect a game console he’d left at the apartment, but he was forced to shoot his friend rather than face what would have been a third beating.
Testimony in the case could wrap up today. If convicted, Telisme, 26, faces life in prison.