WOODLAND — A Yolo County jury delivered murder verdicts Wednesday against the two Woodland men who attacked and stabbed Ronald Antonio — a victim whose only offense, prosecutors said, was being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
After a two-week trial and 3 1/2 days of deliberations, jurors convicted Alexis Ivan Velazquez, 19, of first-degree murder for delivering the fatal stab wounds, and found his accomplice, 23-year-old Justin Matthew Gonzalez, guilty of the lesser offense of second-degree murder.
The panel also found true the allegation that the pair carried out the killing for the benefit of Woodland’s Vario Bosque Norte street gang, and that Velazquez used a deadly weapon in the commission of the crime.
Sentencings for both men are scheduled for Jan. 26. Antonio’s relatives were in court for the verdicts but declined to comment on them until sentencing day.
The homicide occurred on Aug. 30, 2016, at the Casa del Sol trailer park on East Street, where, according to prosecutors, Velazquez and Gonzalez were “on the hunt” that night for rival or former gang members.
Instead they found Antonio, a 41-year-old tire-shop worker with no gang ties. He was mistaken for another man who moments earlier had cut a woman’s arm at the trailer park.
Prosecutors Jeff Reisig and Michael Vroman argued that the defendants had ample opportunity to premeditate the killing as they chased Antonio down the street to his own trailer, where Gonzalez held him from behind while Velazquez delivered the fatal stab wounds to his torso.
“When a completely innocent man is chased and hunted like an animal running from his predator, and he is brutally beaten and stabbed and slashed and murdered … there’s good reason for people to be scared, and we’ve seen it in this case,” Reisig said during his closing argument last week.
“This case really does embody all the worst fears about gang violence in our community,” he added.
Reisig’s comments referred to the multiple reluctant witnesses who testified in court, several of whom expressed fear of retaliation by the gang, a subset of the larger Norteño street gang.
They included Ruby Aradoz, a onetime defendant in the case who made a plea deal five days into the trial. She testified against Velazquez and Gonzalez in exchange for a dismissal of her case.
She had been charged with instigating the violence, accusing a stranger of cutting her arm shortly after Antonio gave her the shirt off his back to stem the bleeding. Velazquez and Gonzalez heard the accusation and came running, but mistook Antonio for the man who caused Aradoz’s injury.
Aradoz placed both men at the scene, saying both were armed with large kitchen knives as they cornered and attacked Antonio.
She also admitted to being intoxicated to the point of blacking out, a detail that defense attorneys Roberto Marquez and Keith Staten both seized upon during their closing arguments.
“She made a sweet deal to save herself,” said Staten, who contended that while his client may be a gang member, surveillance video from the trailer park showed that his client tried to stop Velazquez’s aggression that night, not aid and abet it.
Staten described himself as “extremely disappointed” in the verdict, which he plans to appeal.
“Did they (the jury) lump them together, that birds of a feather are running together? I don’t know,” he said.
The defense lawyers also sought to discredit the testimony of Raquel Ponce-Perez, another Casa del Sol resident who said she witnessed both men participate in the stabbing as she walked to her mailbox that night.
As with Aradoz, they highlighted inconsistencies in Ponce-Perez’s statements as well as her failure to positively identify Gonzalez both at the scene and in a photo lineup the following day.
Meanwhile, physical evidence also implicated Velazquez — namely, a pair of denim shorts found inside his trailer that night that carried both his DNA and traces of Antonio’s blood. Police found his ID and credit card in one of the pockets.
Unable to refute that link, Marquez sought the lesser convictions of either second-degree murder or voluntary manslaughter, arguing that Velazquez acted in the heat of passion after being provoked during an earlier confrontation with another man.
He said after the verdicts that prosecutors failed to prove his client committed first-degree murder or that killing Antonio benefited the gang. The combined convictions have Velazquez facing life in state prison without the possibility of parole.
“Hurting or killing an innocent brings ridicule on the gang,” Marquez said. “It’s considered a screwup, and it’s not for any benefit. But it’s hard to get a jury to overcome the presumption of guilt because of the client’s background.”
Reisig and Vroman declined to comment on Wednesday’s verdicts, as two other defendants in the case, Malinda Joy Collins and Cynthia Maria Tello, are still awaiting trial.
— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8048. Follow her on Twitter at @laurenkeene