A prosecutor told jurors Wednesday that a young man was among a group of people involved in the “relentless” beating death of a USC graduate student from China who was attacked near the campus after a late-night study session.
Deputy District Attorney John McKinney said Andrew Garcia and two others got out of a car in the early morning of July 24, 2014, and confronted Xinran Ji as he walked back to his apartment alone after escorting a female student to her residence.
The 24-year-old electrical engineering student had “no idea that lurking in the neighborhood” was a group of young people “looking for someone to rob,” the prosecutor told the Los Angeles Superior Court jury in his opening statement.
Garcia’s attorney, David Kwak, told the judge he wanted to reserve his opening statement until the defense begins presenting its portion of the case.
Garcia, 21, is the second person to go on trial for Ji’s slaying.
Co-defendant Alejandra Guerrero, 18, was convicted last October of first-degree murder, with jurors finding true the special circumstance allegation of murder during the commission of an attempted robbery, along with an allegation that she personally used a wrench during the attack on Ji.
Guerrero — who is awaiting sentencing and faces up to life in prison without parole — was also found guilty of one count each of robbery, attempted robbery and assault with a deadly weapon for attacking a man and woman at Dockweiler State Beach about two hours after targeting Ji.
Jonathan Del Carmen, 21, and Alberto Ochoa, 20, are still awaiting trial.
Prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty against Garcia or Del Carmen. Guerrero and Ochoa could not face the death penalty because they were both under 18 at the time of the crime.
Del Carmen — who was driving the car — and a teenage girl who is not charged in the killing remained in the vehicle, while Garcia, Guerrero and Ochoa “immediately accosted” Ji and tried to rob him in a confrontation “in full view” of a nearby surveillance camera, McKinney said.
“Mr. Ji took about three or four blows,” the prosecutor said, noting that the victim’s eyeglasses were broken before he took off running.
“At the point that he ran away, Garcia took the bat from Alberto Ochoa,” the prosecutor said. He told jurors that Garcia caught up with the victim and “starts swinging the bat at him, beating him.”
“He’s being beaten, he’s being beaten hard,” McKinney said. “The beating doesn’t stop. It’s just relentless.”
Garcia and Guerrero ran from the scene after Del Carmen drove off and the two eventually got back into the vehicle with the others, while the victim was able to stagger away and make his way back to his fourth-floor apartment, the prosecutor said.
“He goes into his apartment and he doesn’t know it, but he’s dying … The beating was so severe it started a process that couldn’t be stopped,” McKinney said, noting that not even immediate medical intervention would have saved his life.
A bloodied Ji was found lifeless in his bed later that morning by one of his roommates, who called 911 after he failed to respond when she called his name.
“Xinran was just the first victim of the night,” McKinney said, telling jurors that Garcia and three others, including the teenage girl, were subsequently involved in an attack on a man and woman “in an attempt to take their car keys, whatever money they had,” as the victims sat and talked on a curb near Dockweiler Beach.
The male victim — who had been attacked with a baseball bat — was able to alert a nearby police officer and identify Garcia and Ochoa, who were taken into custody early that morning, according to the prosecutor.
DNA testing determined that an aluminum baseball bat with blood on it that was found nearby later that day contained Ji’s blood, McKinney said.
Guerrero and Del Carmen were subsequently arrested.
Ji’s killing occurred two years after two other USC graduate students from China were shot to death during an April 2012 robbery as they sat in a car that was double-parked on a street near the USC campus.
Two men — Javier Bolden and Bryan Barnes — were convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the killings of Ying Wu and Ming Qu, who were both 23.
–City News Service