EXCLUSIVE: In Vegas Shooting, Miami Woman Says "It's Not Me"
MIAMI BEACH (CBSMiami) – She's in the photo with the suspect. She knows the suspect. But Tasha Malek said she's not connected to a recent shooting on the Las Vegas Strip.
"How did you end up in a photo with this guy?" CBS4's Brian Andrews asked Malek.
"Um, I knew [suspect Ammar Harris] from Miami a few years ago. I knew him in Miami," Malek said.
Asked about the photos of the girl in the video below, Malek said: "We look nothing alike. I dont know how they could have mixed this from this."
Malek said she knew Harris when he lived in her downtown Miami building, but that they were friends and that's it.
"Did he seem like the kind of guy who would go crazy on the Las Vegas Strip?" Andrews asked Malek.
"Not at all. Not at all," she replied.
Tasha had a part in a reality TV show on cable. Now, she's in the medical equipment business. She said she can't believe her photo was thrust into this whole mess, with the Las Vegas Police Department calling her Teneesha Lashun Howard, a prostitute and person of interest in the Strip shooting.
"It was a combination of bad luck, sloppy police work, wrecklessness, and them releasing something before they even thought about it," said Malek's attorney, Michael Grieco.
"I dont know anything regarding this situation so but I am being cooperative. This is not me. That's all I can tell them. I had nothing to do with the situation," Malek said.
Tasha's photos were no longer on the Las Vegas Police Department website as of Wednesday night.
"I understand they are trying to catch a murderer, but you can't run over somebody's life in the process and that's what they did. This poor girl has been through too much in two days because the cops couldn't figure out whose picture they were putting out," Grieco said.
"They say they pulled them off of someone's Facebook or his Facebook. I didn't even know that he had a Facebook account. I dont know how they got them or why they even think we look alike or whatever...but its really sad on their part," Malek said.
