“Drunken people saying stupid things.”
That’s how Senior Deputy District Attorney Ebrahim Baytieh explained the provocation outside a Lake Forest bar in 2007 that left one man dead of multiple stab wounds and another man facing a lengthy stint in prison.
Baytieh asked a jury last week for a second-degree murder conviction against Jean Pierre Castellanos, 24, of Anaheim, who brought a knife to a fist fight.
Had Castellanos stuck to his fists, Baytieh said, the altercation likely would have gone down as mutual combat with no one seriously hurt and no charges filed.
But witnesses testified that Castellanos stabbed Timothy Matthew Jones, 26, at least twice when a verbal disagreement after an evening of drinking in Big Shots Billiards on May 8, 2007, escalated into a fight.
Deputy Public Defender Thomas Lo asked the jury to find Castellanos not guilty, arguing that he acted in self defense and in defense of his best friend when one of Jones’ friends pressed the fight.
The jury in Judge Richard Toohey’s courtroom instead found Castellanos guilty of voluntary manslaughter on Monday.
The argument that led to the fatal stabbing started shortly before 1 a.m. as Castellanos and two friends were leaving the pool hall when Andrea L. Connelly, Jones’ girlfriend, and another man bumped into Castellanos’ friend Dan Pickard.
People in both groups – who did not know each other beforehand – then started yelling stupid things at one another, according to Baytieh, and soon the fight was on.
When Jones came out of the bar to join the fight against Pickard, Castellanos jumped into the fray with his knife, Baytieh said. Jones, who was stabbed in the stomach and chest, was taken to Mission Hospital, where he later died.
Connelly, who encouraged the fight and hit both Castellanos and his friend, was convicted of two misdemeanor counts of assault and two misdemeanor counts of battery in May and was sentenced to 120 days in jail.
Castellanos, according to a police report, told Pickard immediately after the incident, “I love you like a brother. I got into a fight to help you. I am going to go to jail for a long time.”
He’s right about that. He faces a 12-year prison term at his sentencing on Sept. 26.
Gosh, whatever happened to just saying excuse me or I’m sorry. You never can tell what people will do now a days and it’s never worth it.
I just love how the defendant tells the friend, I love you like a brother, I got into a fight to help you, I am going to go to jail for a long time. How dare he place such guilt on the friend, the friend didn’t pull out a knife.
…..idiots…all of them..