A 23-year-old punk rocker should be convicted of murder because he brought a knife to a fistfight triggered by his aggressive moshing at a Santa Ana nightclub, a prosecutor told jurors Wednesday, while the defendant’s attorney said her client acted in self-defense.
Juan Angel Rivera of Santa Ana is charged with murder with a sentencing enhancement for the personal use of a knife. He is accused of killing 23-year-old Nathan Alfaro on March 3, 2016 at Underground DTSA at 220 Third St.
Rivera was “moshing,” a form of dancing to punk music that involves jostling other concert-goers, in a way that upset Alfaro and the two got into two fights, according to Senior Deputy District Attorney Keith Burke. In both cases, other patrons at the club pulled the two apart, Burke said.
One witness told authorities she saw Rivera “sheath” a knife after the second scuffle, Burke said.
No one realized immediately what had happened, but Alfaro got up and stumbled out to the front of the club and collapsed on the sidewalk, bleeding, Burke said. He was pronounced dead a short time after arriving at a hospital, the prosecutor said.
The defendant, meanwhile, exited from a side door mainly used by the bands to truck in their instruments, Burke said. Rivera walked a half-mile to his home, the prosecutor said.
“Some witnesses will say he looked dazed and confused,” Burke said of the defendant. “But he didn’t ask for any help. He didn’t ask anyone to call police.”
Alfaro was stabbed five times. The band on stage at the time kept playing, Burke said.
Alfaro suffered stab wounds to the chest, the backside of his left arm, twice in his left armpit and once in the left side, which “got his lung and that was the one that killed him,” Burke said.
Police quickly sized up Rivera as the prime suspect and had him under surveillance when they arrested him the following morning, with the defendant’s bloody clothes in the car he was riding in, Burke said.
One of his friends convinced the defendant to give him the knife after the concert so he could hide it, Burke said. Police were unable to find the knife during a subsequent search, but the friend recently told an investigator for the prosecutor where they could find it, the prosecutor added.
Rivera sustained a “significant” wound to his left small finger during the fracas, Burke said. He cut himself as “he was killing Nathan Alfaro,” Burke added.
The two combatants had been drinking and “there was even some marijuana on board” for the victim, but he got into a fistfight with someone and didn’t expect it to turn into a knife fight, Burke said.
Burke also told jurors that the defendant was involved in another incident with a knife the Christmas before the killing. In that case, Rivera was kicking someone’s car and when confronted by the owner he pulled a knife on the victim and chased him when the victim tried to knock the weapon out of his hand with a stick, Burke said.
Rivera’s attorney, Alison Worthington, told jurors that her client was engaged in “pretty normal behavior” for a punk rock concert and was merely “clearly exuberant and really feeling it” when he tried to start a “mosh pit” of dancers.
Alfaro, however, was “annoyed” and “shoved (Rivera) so hard that’s when the fight started,” Worthington said. Alfaro was 6 feet tall and weighed about 300 pounds so he had a physical advantage over the 5-feet-4, 135-pound Rivera, Worthington said.
In the first squabble, Alfaro was “getting the better of Mr. Rivera,” but the other concert-goers broke it up, Worthington said.
But the next song was more “up-tempo,” and when Rivera started “bouncing around like a pinball,” the two got into another scrum, Worthington said.
Alfaro pushed Rivera up on the stage and “started punching Mr. Rivera in the head,” Worthington said.
“It took four or five guys to pull Mr. Alfaro off of Mr. Rivera,” Worthington said.
During the battle, Rivera felt he was “suffocating and thought he was going to die,” Worthington said.
“He can’t breathe, he’s losing consciousness, he can’t stop the blows from coming and that’s when he grabs his knife,” the attorney said.
Rivera left the club because he was unaware of how seriously wounded Alfaro was, Worthington said.
The defense plans to present evidence from a psychological expert on the “flight or fight” syndrome and a neurologist on symptoms of a concussion.
— City News Service