The State - News from July 7, 1989
A white man was convicted in a Sacramento Superior Court of murder and attempted murder in the racially motivated shootings of two elderly black men. Police say Ronald Z. Nesbitt, 35, opened fire from a car as the Rev. Sim Walton and Thomas Pruitt stood at a downtown Sacramento street corner on Oct. 13, 1987. Walton, 72, pastor of the Mt. Calvary Missionary Baptist Church in suburban Del Paso Heights, died after being hit in the chest, stomach and head. Pruitt, 70, recovered after being grazed in the neck. Prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed that Nesbitt is mentally ill and that the rifle attack was racially motivated, but Supervising Deputy Dist. Atty. Dick Gilmour said he believed that Nesbitt acted with “cold, calculated judgment.†The trial now enters a sanity phase.
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