A Marin judge denied a defense attorney's attempts to separate attempted murder and commercial burglary charges for Max Wade, a local teen accused of attempting to shoot two people in Mill Valley and stealing celebrity chef Guy Fieri’s yellow Lamborghini.
The 18-year-old defendant faces two counts of attempted murder and shooting into an occupied pickup truck, as well as commercial burglary charges for a car heist that occurred in 2011. Although Wade's attorney Charles Dresow tried to get both cases tried separately, Judge Kelly Simmons denied the request Monday. Following the denial, Wade entered a not guilty pleas to all charges.
Wade is accused of driving up on a motorcycle and shooting at teen couple Landon Wahlstrom and Eva Dedier as they sat in a Dodge pickup truck outside a home on Evergreen and Ethel avenues in Mill Valley on April 13. The motorcyclist was dressed in black with his face shielded by a black helmet with a dark-tinted visor.
Wade’s commercial burglary charge came from the alleged theft of Fieri's $200,000 bright yellow 2008 Lamborghini Spyder Gallardo on March 8, 2011. in that heist, the thief rappelled down from the roof of British Motor Car Distributors dealership on Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco, entered through a window, then drove away in the car, according to San Francisco police.
Investigators trailed Wade after he texted Dedier three days after the Mill Valley shooting about whether she wanted to pick up her fake ID. He asked her if she wanted him to pick her up in the Lamborghini, according to Dedier's testimony in the preliminary hearing.
Detectives found the sports car in the Richmond storage unit near where they arrested Wade on April 29. Along with the car, they also discovered fake ID cards for California, Florida and New York, local police scanner coordinates, cellphone-jamming equipment, a dismantled AKA-47 assault weapon, a shotgun and a full San Francisco Police Department uniform with a badge and duty belt.
If the incidents were tried as separate cases, evidence from the theft could not be used in the hearing on the shooting and vice versa, according to Dresow.
Wade could face up to 30 years in prison if convicted.
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I was dismissed from a jury for far less of an opinion. IMHO, Max Wade's trial and Naso's trial will be highly entertaining due to defense theatrics. Even the inept OJ prosecution team could get a conviction of either one due to overwhelming evidence.