LOS ANGELES, California — A former Maine man, one of two Greenville natives arrested just over a year ago in connection with the shooting death of a homeless man in Hollywood, is scheduled to be retried for murder on Thursday, according to officials.
Troy T. McVey, 22, is accused of shooting a transient, Richard Miller, 52, just before midnight on Jan. 4, 2015, according to information from Greg Risling, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office. A short time later, McVey and Colby R. Kronholm, 21, both formerly of Greenville, were arrested together and charged with murder.
McVey, who is being held on $1 million bail, also faces a gun charge.
“We went to trial in October, and the jury hung up,” McVey’s attorney, Arthur Lindars of Los Angeles, said Monday by phone. “We’re supposed to have a retrial on Thursday.”
During the October trial, the murder charge against Kronholm was dismissed, Lindars said.
“Colby is out of the picture,” he said. “It should have been done long ago, but they held off. He went back to Maine. He was ordered back [Thursday] as a possible witness.”
Messages left for Kronholm and for McVey’s family were not returned.
Lindars said the two Greenville friends were on a road trip to Hollywood when they were attacked by robbers. Investigators say McVey was the attacker, possibly in a drug deal gone wrong, Los Angeles police Detective Mark Morgan said at McVey’s plea hearing.
Miller was shot multiple times at about 11:55 p.m. Jan. 4, 2015, and was taken to an area hospital where he later died of his wounds, according to a news release from the Los Angeles Police Department issued the day after the shooting. The shooting occurred at a busy intersection in the Hollywood district of Los Angeles and was witnessed by an off-duty Los Angeles Police Department officer, who helped to lead police to the whereabouts of McVey and Kronholm, who ran from the scene.
McVey also is scheduled to be in court at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, his lawyer said.
“It’s to see if we’re going to start the retrial,” Lindars said, adding one of the prosecution’s main witnesses is in Sweden and could delay McVey’s second trial.
“The prosecution may decide to dismiss and recharge,” McVey’s attorney said, adding that the move would provide prosecutors another 60 days before a trial is held.
Deputy District Attorney Michael Dean is handling the case, and the option of dismissing the charges against McVey and recharging him is on the table, Risling confirmed Monday.
The two Greenville High School graduates moved together from Maine to California in the fall of 2014. McVey, a former Maine Maritime Academy student, was enrolled for a time at the California Maritime Academy.
He is being held at the Men’s Central Jail on Bauchet Street in Los Angeles, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s online inmate information center.
“He’s in good spirits considering how long he’s been in there,” his attorney said. “It’s just over a year.”
McVey faces a maximum sentence of 25 years to life in prison, if found guilty.
Bangor resident Laura Lyons spoke to the Bangor Daily News shortly after the shooting saying that she believed Kronholm, her friend of three years, was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
She said Monday that she was beyond relieved when he was released. The charges were dismissed on Oct. 19, 2015, and he visited her in Bangor on Oct. 27. She posted a photograph of the two of them smiling at the camera on her Facebook page.
“I knew deep down he didn’t do it, and I was right,” she said Monday by text message. “He’s such an amazing man.”