One man was ordered to stand trial following a preliminary hearing Friday in the fatal shooting of an Anaheim man in Huntington Beach a year ago, but two other defendants had murder charges dismissed.
Huntington Beach residents Arnaldo Malaca, 34, was ordered to stand trial on murder and a felony count of carrying a concealed loaded unregistered firearm with sentencing enhancements for discharge of a gun causing death and attempted premeditated murder. Malaca is scheduled to be arraigned Nov. 25.
Murder charges were dismissed for Michael Cardoso, 30, and Roberto Lopez, 25.
Jesus Torres-Martinez, 22, and Magdaleno Barragan, 26, were also ordered to stand trial on a felony count of being an accessory after the fact.
They are charged in connection with the killing of 29-year-old Rozzalle Hellens about 2 a.m. near Olive Avenue and Main Street on Sept. 15, 2024, police said.
Police have not released any details about the shooting, but court records show the victim had been in trouble with the law since he was 18 and as recently as last year.
Hellens pleaded guilty in January 2014 to multiple counts of armed robbery.
In November of 2015, he pleaded guilty to leading police on a chase while drunk.
Hellens got in a scuffle with Anaheim police during a domestic violence dispute over his one-month-old daughter in Anaheim four years ago, according to court records. He pleaded guilty to assault with force likely to produce great bodily injury, attacking the mother of his baby, false imprisonment, child abuse and endangerment, and criminal threats, all felonies, and misdemeanor counts of resisting arrest and child abuse and endangerment.
Hellens was sentenced Feb. 23, 2022, to three years in prison. He was charged last year with disobeying a domestic relations court order, and that case was pending, according to court records.
The mother of their daughter said in court papers that Hellens “has anger problems and marijuana smoking problems,” but added, “He is a good person but his personality changes after he smokes marijuana.”
The two got into a dispute about his habit and he picked her up by her neck and threw her on a bed before taking their infant daughter, she said in court papers.
She said she began worrying later when she recalled he said that his father had abducted him when he was a child and was away from his mother for 15 years, so she called police to see what rights she had.
When he returned home hours later, they got into another violent conflict, prompting her to run out of the house and call police, who got into a scrum with Hellens when they say he tried to grab an officer’s Taser, police said in 2021.
She tried to convince law enforcement to drop the domestic violence case, but on Aug. 31, 2023, she asked for a restoration of a protective order saying he “violated the peaceful contact (agreement) multiple times,” according to court records.
She added that he “tried to suffocate me with his left hand and with the right hand he was choking me.”