In an Orange County apartment complex, Sidney Bararchi Clarke clashed with his neighbor over his smoking habit — until prosecutors say it drove Clarke to kill him. Now he’ll spend 50 years to life in prison.
A Superior Court jury last month convicted Clarke, 31, of murder and a sentencing enhancement for fatally shooting 21-year-old Logan Kahmar, who lived below him in the Raintree Apartments in Brea.
Kahmar, a young father who lived with his girlfriend and infant daughter, had a regular habit of sitting on his balcony to smoke cigarettes and marijuana. It was a routine that prosecutors say slowly grated on Clarke, eventually to the point that his “anger consumed him,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing brief filed in court.
Tensions got so high that Clarke allegedly threw water on Kahmar’s girlfriend as she smoked on her balcony, police said.
But the situation came to head on the evening of Aug. 30, 2023, when Kahmar, who was alone with his infant daughter, stepped outside to smoke.
Clarke grabbed a 9mm Glock from his gun safe, went downstairs to Kahmar’s apartment and shot him several times, prosecutors wrote in the sentencing brief. Kahmar called 911, screaming that he had been shot.
When police arrived a few minutes later, Clarke had fled and Kahmar was dead in the apartment.
Senior Deputy Dist. Atty. Nick Thomo wrote in the sentencing brief that Clarke carried out a “heinous crime” for an “innocuous” act.
Detectives later found Clarke’s open gun safe and paperwork matching the dark SUV that neighbors saw leaving the shooting scene that night. Clarke was arrested the next day when a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputy saw him in the car in a Starbucks parking lot.
This story originally appeared on LA Times
