Deepa Bharath
COSTA MESA -- A macabre, broad daylight shooting that left a
49-year-old Newport Beach man dead -- and stunned many who witnessed the
surreal scene -- was much more than a heated fight between two men that
escalated out of control.
Information emerging from the trial shows the shooting that jolted
many people going about their everyday lives on a bright Friday afternoon
a year ago was a violent, unexpected and shocking episode -- if not the
conclusion -- in a series of convoluted stories spanning more than a
decade -- stories with underlying themes of crime, deceit and betrayal.
As a jury determines the fate of 42-year-old Ramadan Dokovic, possibly
on Friday, the case of the Downey man may have led detectives to an
underground credit card fraud ring in which at least one local business
was bilked out of more than $225,000.
It was on the afternoon of May 18, 2001, when several witnesses
testified they saw the two men struggling over a gun in the parking lot
of the Jack in the Box restaurant at the corner of 17th Street and Tustin
Avenue.
The pair sat parked in Miroslav Maric's black Mercedes-Benz
convertible with the top down when many people, who were either shopping,
getting food, working or getting their hair done, heard Maric's plaintive
cries for help and then saw him slump as the gun in Dokovic's hand went
off, pumping three bullets into Maric from the long-barreled handgun at
close range.
Although detectives themselves called the incident the most public
shooting in the city's history, the Costa Mesa Police Department released
little information about the investigation during the months that
followed.
But details that emerged from the trial, Dokovic's own statements to
the police and other court documents have shown that the incident was
linked to a credit card fraud ring that operated mostly in Costa Mesa and
Newport Beach.
In his statements right after the incident, Dokovic told police he
met Maric on that fateful day so he could get in touch with his nephew,
Mike Dokovic, whose real name is Ilmija Frljuckic.
Dokovic said he had made a deal with Glenn Verdult, owner of Winston's
Newport Jewelers in Costa Mesa, that he would retrieve four Rolex watches
from Mike Dokovic in return for $20,000. Ramadan Dokovic said Verdult
claimed those watches, each valued at more than $40,000, belonged to him
and a friend.
But Dokovic and his nephew went way back. Both had immigrated from
their native Yugoslavia to New York 10 years ago.
