A 24-year-old man completed his 6-year sentence Monday for his part in a beating death of a homeless man in Westminster.
Christian Huerta of Huntington Beach was sentenced to six years on May 31, but the punishment was not made official by Orange County Superior Court Judge Steven Bromberg until Monday so the defendant would have accrued enough custody credits to avoid being sent to prison. Huerta was credited with 2,190 days behind bars.
Co-defendant Andrew Holquin, 26, of Midway City, was scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 11.
The two were both convicted March 27 for the June 20, 2019, killing of 45-year-old Duc Le.
Jurors convicted Holguin of second-degree murder and Huerta of voluntary manslaughter.
Bromberg ruled in April in a non-jury trial that a sentencing enhancement for gang activity was true for Holguin, but the judge acquitted him of a felony count of participating in gang activity.
Bromberg also acquitted Huerta of the same felony charge and denied the gang-activity sentencing enhancement for the defendant.
Holguin, who has been in custody since 2019, faces 15 years to life in prison.
At issue in the second phase of the trial was how much the affiliation the defendants had with a local gang played in their motivation for the crime. In 2021, the lead detective in the case testified the chief activity of the gang was vandalism, but after a change in the law last year, vandalism is not enough to attach gang enhancements to a crime.
Deputy District Attorney Lisa Harris argued that the convictions for the assault, coupled with other incidents of assaults by the gang, justified the enhancements.
In Holguin’s case, he punched the slumbering victim three times before the assault that led to his death and then bragged to his friends that he “taxed” the victim, Harris said. The slang refers to a gang assault.
Holguin’s attorney, Roger Sheaks, argued the law prevents changing the primary activity of the gang before the trial.
Huerta’s attorney, Joel Garson, argued in an analogy that showing there were some “bad apples” in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department wouldn’t prove the department as a whole was a gang. He said there were about three crimes of assaults over three years in a gang of about 25 members, Garson said.
Another suspect — Jeffrey Andrade — remains at-large and a fourth defendant is being tried as a juvenile.
Le’s body was found at about 10 p.m. June 20, 2019, on Locust Street just south of Westminster Boulevard, police said.
Half of Le’s ribs were broken along with his jaw, Lisa Harris said in her opening statement of the trial.
The assailants “saw an easy target” in Le, a “homeless man sleeping on a couch,” Harris said.
One witness saw “them punching and kicking and at first didn’t know a human being” was the target, Harris said.
Then the witness saw the attackers “drag him across the street” and through a construction site as “his hair came out of his scalp,” Harris said. The victim’s ear was nearly torn off, the prosecutor added.
At some point, something “came over” Holguin and he “bashed (Le) over and over again with his skateboard, and if he wasn’t already dead yet he certainly was now,” Harris said.
The victim was born in Vietnam before emigrating to the United States, Harris said.
Prosecutors said Le had mental health issues and would drift in and out of homelessness.