WOODLAND — A prosecutor broke down video of a violent Picnic Day brawl in Davis frame by frame Friday in a Yolo County courtroom, highlighting the punches and kicks the fight’s five suspects delivered to several undercover police officers.
For the most part, the suspects admitted to their involvement in the fight. But they insisted they had no idea the people they traded blows with were law-enforcement officers, according to testimony offered during the second day of the defendants’ preliminary hearing in Yolo Superior Court.
“I thought they were just some random-ass people,” Iszir Price, detained a block away from the April 22 melee on Russell Boulevard, told Davis police Officer Nicholas Peel, one of several officers who took the witness stand in Judge David Rosenberg’s courtroom.
“I’m not trying to fight a police officer,” Price said to Peel.
Peel described Price as forthcoming about his role in the scuffle, which began when the three plain-clothed officers pulled over in their unmarked green car to move along a crowd of revelers who had gathered in the roadway.
A confrontation ensued that brought all three officers out of the van and into a street battle, resulting in the arrests of three suspects that day and two more in the weeks that followed.
While police reported being descended upon by a “hostile” crowd on the corner of Russell Boulevard and College Park, the defendants say they acted in self-defense after the officers triggered the confrontation with their aggressive approach.
Price, Alexander Craver, Antwoine Perry, Angelica Reyes and Elijah Williams — dubbed the “Picnic Day 5” on social media — face felony charges of assault on a peace officer and resisting arrest. All have pleaded not guilty.
Their preliminary hearing, which continues Aug. 29 and 30, will determine whether there is sufficient evidence for the case to proceed to trial.
Price told Peel he was walking on a neighboring street when he got a phone call alerting him that Perry, his brother, was embroiled in a fight. Price said he ran to the scene and began grabbing and punching the other man — whom he described as a “Hawaiian male subject” — to get him off Perry.
“Undercover! Undercover!” the other man yelled while holding up badge, Price told Peel, the officer testified. He added that Price seemed confused by the revelation.
“He looked like us,” Price said, according to Peel.
Perry, detained by police about a half-mile from the fight scene, also acknowledged being at the brawl, describing to an officer a chaotic scene that preceded it.
“He said that a man honked at him and rushed him,” testified Officer Lee Hatfield, who had been dispatched to search for fleeing suspects. He spotted Perry walking in the area of 11th and B streets, wearing a different shirt than the one he had on during the fight. The original was in his backpack.
“One of his friends swung at the person … then a fourth person hit him in the face,” Hatfield said of Perry, who recalled being taken to the ground and dragged.
It was at that point the person identified himself as a police officer, according to Perry, who said he ran from the scene after the officer let go of him. He, Craver and Williams were detained that afternoon.
Perry’s girlfriend, Angelica Reyes, wouldn’t be arrested for six more weeks but was interviewed by Detective Josh Helton via cell phone on the night of the brawl.
Video taken by a passing motorist’s dashboard camera, obtained by police days later, shows Reyes appearing to strike one of the officers, Sgt. Steve Ramos, who turned and took her to the ground in a headlock.
Craver then intervened, pulling Ramos to the ground, after which Reyes got up and kicked Ramos several times in the head, the footage shows.
In her statement to Helton, Reyes recalled a vehicle approaching the crowd that had gathered at the street corner, followed by “some sort of verbal exchange with Mr. Perry and the people in the car,” Helton said.
“A fight happened when the people in the van got out,” he added. “She told me that during that fight she was punched by a police officer,” though she denied seeing identification on anyone who emerged from the van.
Reyes also repeatedly disputed reports that she had assaulted Ramos, telling Helton, “I never touched anyone.”
Later, confronted with video, “her reply was that a lot of things were going on and that she didn’t remember things very well,” Helton said.
As Helton testified, prosecuting attorney Ryan Couzens played a pair of cell-phone videos showing the officers’ and suspects’ movements second by second as stunned witnesses — many of them capturing their own footage of the fracas — looked on.
— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8048. Follow her on Twitter at @laurenkeene