A man was convicted Friday of voluntary manslaughter for chasing after and fatally stabbing a man who had confronted him in the Belmont Shore area of Long Beach.
The Long Beach jury deliberated about a day before acquitting Sergio Alvarez, 27, of the more serious count of second-degree murder for the March 6, 2022, killing of Gavin Clason — an act that Alvarez’s attorney contended was committed in self-defense.
Jurors found true an allegation that Alvarez used a knife to stab the 33-year-old victim, along with convicting him of dissuading a witness from reporting a crime. The panel acquitted him of a second-degree robbery charge involving Clason’s belongings, finding him guilty of a misdemeanor count of petty theft.
Superior Court Judge Richard M. Goul ordered Alvarez to return to court July 21 for sentencing. It was not immediately clear what kind of sentence he would face.
“This has been a difficult week,” the victim’s father, Norman, said outside court after the verdict. “I don’t think he deserved to die the way he did here … We’re just really going to miss him.”
Deputy District Attorney Jacqueline Mac told jurors in her closing argument Thursday that Clason initially ran toward Alvarez, but said “there was no danger to him (the defendant) at the time he chased Gavin down and stabbed him in the street.”
Mac said Alvarez “did not have a reasonable belief in this case that his life was in danger,” telling jurors he “went overboard” and stabbed Clason twice while he was on the ground.
Alvarez told a co-worker at a nearby fast-food restaurant not to tell police what happened and went home and shaved his hair in an effort to cover his tracks, Mac said.
Defense attorney Joe Gibbons countered that his client — 5 feet, 1 inch tall and 122 pounds — was with a friend and was riding a skateboard when he was confronted by Clason, whom he said was 5 feet, 11 inches tall and 190 pounds, acting erratically and later determined to have a blood-alcohol content of more than three times considered the legal limit for impairment while driving.
Gibbons noted that he had told jurors at the start of the trial that “this was going to be a self-defense case,” saying that Clason “went after the littlest guy” who “had a right to be scared” and “had a right to defend himself.”
Gibbons noted that his client — who testified in his own defense — admitted that he had stabbed Clason.
“I submit to you he acted in a very, very reasonable way given the circumstances,” Gibbons said, in urging jurors to acquit his client of murder or to consider the lesser crimes of voluntary manslaughter or involuntary manslaughter.
Gibbons also told the panel that he thought the prosecution had not made its case on the robbery charge either involving items belonging to Clason that were picked up later from the sidewalk, and said he would leave it up to the jury to decide whether Alvarez had tried to persuade a witness not to call police.
In her rebuttal argument, Mac countered that Alvarez was “acting out of anger,” not in self-defense. She noted that jurors have multiple surveillance video clips that they can review of the initial confrontation and the subsequent stabbing.
Clason was pronounced dead on the sidewalk in the 3900 block of East Ocean Boulevard.
Alvarez was arrested the following day, and has remained behind bars since then, according to jail records.