The last of four defendants ranging in age from 16 to 19 was ordered Thursday to stand trial for the beating death of a USC graduate student from China, who was attacked near the campus while walking back to his apartment last summer.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge M.L. Villar denied a defense motion to dismiss the charges against Andrew Garcia, saying she found “sufficient cause” to require the 19-year-old defendant to proceed to trial on a murder charge stemming from the July 24 attack on Xinran Ji.
Garcia was also ordered to stand trial on one count each of robbery, attempted robbery and assault with a deadly weapon for an alleged attack on a man and woman at Dockweiler State Beach less than two hours later.
At a hearing in January, the same judge found enough evidence to require three other defendants — Jonathan Del Carmen, 19, Alberto Ochoa, now 18, and Alejandra Guerrero, 16 — to stand trial in Ji’s killing. Ochoa and Guerrero were also ordered to stand trial in connection with the alleged attack at Dockweiler State Beach.
Along with murder, all four defendants face a special circumstance allegation that Ji’s murder occurred during an attempted robbery.
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office will decide later whether to seek the death penalty against Garcia, but has opted not to seek the death penalty against Del Carmen. Ochoa and Guerrero, who are charged as adults, cannot face the death penalty because they were under 18 at the time.
All four defendants are due back in court May 14 for arraignment.
Ji, a 24-year-old electrical engineering student, was attacked about 12:45 a.m. after walking a woman home from a study group that wrapped up at about 12:30 that morning. He managed to make it back to his fourth-floor apartment, where he was found lifeless in his bed by one of his roommates, who called 911 after he failed to respond when she called out his name.
He died from severe cranial cerebral trauma.
In testimony Wednesday, Los Angeles police Detective Paul Shearholdt said Garcia initially denied being in the area of USC, then admitted that he and others were involved in the attack on Ji following a discussion about “flocking” — or robbing — people.
He acknowledged that he punched Ji in the face and said he tried to hit Ji once with a baseball bat but missed, according to the detective.
“He had indicated that Mr. Ji was crying … and speaking in a foreign language,” the detective said.
The detective noted that Garcia and Ochoa gave varying accounts about the attack on Ji.
Another Los Angeles police detective, Matthew Courtney, said he believed one of the people shown chasing Ji on surveillance tape following the initial confrontation was Garcia, noting that he was wearing similar clothing at the time of his arrest.
“At the end of the interview, he learned we were investigating a homicide,” he said of his discussion with Garcia. “He was upset … I believe he put his head down.”
Courtney testified that he observed possible blood evidence in the living room, bathroom and bedroom of the victim’s apartment, and a followed a potential blood trail from the City Park apartment unit eastbound on 30th Street, northbound on Orchard and westbound on 29th Street.
The detective said he believed at least two vehicles on that path had smear marks on them that constituted potential blood evidence, and that he saw broken eyeglass frames consistent with the type Ji was seen wearing in surveillance footage when he left his apartment about 7:30 p.m. the night before.
“In this case, it was quite a large crime scene,” the detective testified.
The four defendants and another teenage girl allegedly went from the USC area to Dockweiler State Beach, where a man and woman who were sitting on the curb talking were confronted within less than two hours and the man was struck in the face by a baseball bat.
The woman — who identified both Ochoa and Garcia as the two males who confronted her friend — told investigators that she was confronted by the two females, one of whom got away with some cash that fell out of her purse during a struggle, according to testimony during the hearing.
Ochoa and Garcia were taken into custody while walking by the nearby Hyperion Treatment Plant after the man they allegedly attempted to rob summoned a patrol car at Dockweiler State Beach. Del Carmen and Guerrero were arrested later that day.
An aluminum baseball bat that appeared to have blood on it was later recovered from a brush area near the beach, Los Angeles police Officer Christian Faulkner testified.
— City News Service