Las Vegas: 3rd Slaying in 2 weeks

Fatal Vegas casino punch was self-defense, claims wife of accused
By Barry Leibowitz

(CBS/AP) LAS VEGAS - The wife of Florida high school football coach Benjamin Hawkins, who's being held on a murder charge, says Hawkins was defending himself when he threw a single punch that authorities say killed a man in a casino on the Las Vegas Strip.


"It just looked like he wouldn't leave my husband alone," Leticia Hawkins, 35, a banker from Gainesville, Fla., told The Associated Press. "My husband was defending himself."


Benjamin Hawkins pleaded not guilty Friday during a brief appearance before a Las Vegas judge, who scheduled a Tuesday bail hearing in the death of 46-year-old John Massie, of Roy, Utah.


Defense attorney Jack Buchanan told AP he wanted to review security videotapes that police say clearly show the confrontation between Hawkins and Massey after the two exited a men's restroom at O'Sheas Las Vegas Casino. The video shows the single punch that felled Massie.


Benjamin Hawkins, who is black, told police that Massie, who's white, made a comment about a "black man in a yellow shirt" in the restroom. He also said he told Massie to shut up before the two men squared off in a food court area of the hard-partying, Irish-themed casino that lures pedestrian traffic on a block that includes the Harrah's, Flamingo and Caesars Palace resorts.


Police say Hawkins told them he interpreted Massie's actions as aggressive, and he feared that if he turned his back on Massie, he'd be attacked from behind. Benjamin Hawkins whirled and punched Massie once in the jaw, according to a police report.


The Clark County coroner determined Massie died of a head injury from the punch and a fall to the floor. The death was classified as a homicide.


Benjamin Hawkins is a teacher and assistant football coach at Bradford County High School in Starke, Fla.


Jeremy Brown, a friend who was visiting Las Vegas with the Hawkinses, said he didn't think racial bias played a role in Hawkins' mind during the confrontation.


"Ben did not hit the other person just because he was white," Brown said. "Race may have been what motivated the other guy."


The slaying was the third on the Vegas Strip in less than two weeks. Police say the deaths - including the fatal stabbings of a 21-year-old man Monday on a pedestrian walkway between casinos, and of another 21-year-old Las Vegas man in a pre-dawn confrontation June 25 - are not related, and arrests have been made in each case.