Opinion ID: 2634864
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Murder of George Martinez, February 22, 1989

Text: Daneen Baker, a waitress and dancer at the Fort Knots bar, a topless dance establishment located in South Gate, testified that on February 22, 1989, at approximately 8:00 p.m., she was dancing on stage when a patron reached up and touched me on the back of my thigh, a violation of the establishment's policy. Recalling that she was angry, Baker bent down and I looked in his face, and I told him, `Don't you ever touch me.' And at that time I called over George [Martinez], [who] was the doorman, and I told him to get him out of there, I said because he's touching me .... and I grabbed my top and I got off stage. Martinez approached the patron, told him he had to leave and, with the help of the manager of the bar, escorted the customer from the premises. Baker remembered the patron's face very well and identified him in a pretrial lineup and at trial as defendant. Approximately 90 minutes after this incident, Baker again was dancing when she heard gunshots, causing her to jump from the stage and hide near the jukebox. Baker did not see who fired the gun, but shortly thereafter saw Martinez laying on the floor and he wasn't moving. Mario Medel testified that he was employed as the manager of Fort Knots on the evening of the shooting. He recalled responding to Baker's complaint that there was a patron reaching over the chain and touching her. Because the patron indicated he did not understand English, Medel asked George Martinez to speak with him in Spanish. When the patron refused Medel's request to leave, we forcibly had to escort him out. Outside, when Medel and Martinez attempted to explain to the patron why he was being thrown out, he took a swing at Medel, prompting Medel to hit him in the face. Medel and Martinez returned to the bar. When the patron reentered the establishment, Medel and Martinez pushed him out. We just kept telling him, `Go on home. You had too much to drink. We told you, you can't touch the girls. Just leave.' Shortly thereafter, the patron returned again to the bar. Medel was in the back office, and [o]ne of the girls came running back and said, `George is outside again with that guy.' So I locked up the office, went outside, and George was wrestling with the guy. I broke that up .... and instructed George to go back inside. I was out there arguing with the guy. That's when ... he started talking about coming back with a gun. I just kind of like blew it off, because you hear it all the time in this business. So then I went back inside, and I stayed there with George again. Medel did not believe the patron would return, but he came back again [and].... I physically threw him out. Literally just threw him out. Medel returned to the back office, and [a]gain, they came back and told me George was outside in a fight. So I ran out there. If I remember right, he kind of like had George around the waist.... And George hit him with his [plastic] flashlight.... So when I broke it up, he turned around and swung at me again; and I swung at him and hit him. He went backwards and ... his head hit the little wall, kind of knocked him out a little bit. An unmarked police car arrived, Medel explained the problem to the officers, and they told the patron to leave. Observing the patron walk down the street, Medel reentered the bar. Medel further testified: So then something told me to go around back and get up on top of the roof to see what was going on. I went on top of the roof, and I was looking down, and I noticed a white Camaro drive up. They opened the back hatch, and two guys were going through the back looking for something.... So when I saw that, I came down off the roof; and me and George closed the front door. I was sitting there on the stool ..., and George was standing against the mirrors.... And the next thing that happened was the guy  the door opened. George was looking down the hallway. Then he kind of turned to me; and he says, `Mario, he is back.' The guy started walking up the hallway.... I saw this in the mirror. He had a brown coat on. He reached inside his coat, just point blank just shot George with the first bullet. When I saw the first round go off, me and another patron just kind of like swung around behind the cigarette machine. Then I heard a second round go off, and that was it. Waited a few moments, got up, went to see George. George was staggering at me, and the guy was gone.... At first he [Martinez] was kind of like holding onto himself. He was starting to fall, so I caught him and laid him down.... I went out this side door very cautiously and went and looked around the side of the building to see if the patron was still out there. Himself and the car [were] gone. I ran back inside and called 911 to get help for George. Medel testified he saw the patron's face during each one of the arguments outside the bar, and that it was reflected in the mirror when the patron returned with the gun, which Medel saw him remove from underneath his jacket, probably in his waistband. In a pretrial photographic lineup, at the preliminary hearing, and at trial, Medel identified the patron as defendant. On the evening of the shooting, Mark Herbert was a patron at Fort Knots. Herbert's testimony was substantially similar to that given by Mario Medel, namely that a dancer complained a patron had touched her; the patron, who was argumentative, was escorted out, only to return repeatedly and scuffle with the doorman; and eventually two gunshots were heard and the doorman fell, mortally wounded. In a pretrial photographic lineup, at the preliminary hearing, and at trial, Herbert identified the argumentative patron as defendant. Herbert, however, did not see who fired the weapon. Barbara Quijada, a waitress and dancer employed at Fort Knots, began her shift approximately one hour prior to the shooting and was unaware of the disturbances involving defendant. Quijada testified that immediately prior to the shooting, she was speaking with George Martinez about his baby. She saw a man walk toward Martinez, which led Martinez to declare: Hey Mario, there's that guy again. Quijada saw the man open up his jacket, reach like for a wallet, ... there was a real like rapid fire, pop, pop, pop, and a whole bunch of smoke. Quijada saw Martinez holding his chest and sliding down the ... wall.... [4] Immediately after the shooting, Quijada crawled to a far bathroom, where she started shaking apart. Hearing someone yell for a paramedic, Quijada, who previously had received training as an emergency medical technician, splashed water on her face and pushed my way through the girls and all the men around and told them that I was the closest they were going to get to a paramedic for the moment.... I had to break through a mound of people hovering over him, and for someone that was shaking apart to an extreme I took charge as fast as I could.... I got him some air. I pushed everybody out of his way, and I elevated his head and opened his airway and started monitoring his vitals.... [I]t was a dead-on heart shot.... The kind of heartbeat I was getting was not close to normal.... My friend was on his way out. Quijada further testified: When his vitals [reached] a severe point I very calmly told him to hold on, not to get any more scared but I was going to have to help him breathe for a little while until the ambulance got there. And I closed my eyes and asked if by chance was there anyone else in this bar that could handle two-man C.P.R. other than me. And there was a real firm hand on my shoulder, and I looked up, and I was surrounded by policemen. One officer told me that they had been there for five to ten minutes. And I asked, `Why didn't you help me?' They told me that there was nothing that they could have done any better than what I had because he left with nice thoughts. Because Quijada had been standing near the mirrored entryway when the shooting occurred, she saw the shooter from every angle. She recalled that the man's face looked like he had taken a few punches. As part of the police investigation, she assisted in the production of a composite illustration of the shooter, which she testified was a very close likeness of him. Quijada identified defendant in a pretrial photographic lineup; asked why she picked that photograph, Quijada testified, Because that's the face that's been haunting me. That's the face I've tried to forget.... There is no doubt in my mind. I was too close and it was too much of a traumatizing series of actions for me to ever, ever forget it. She also identified defendant at the preliminary hearing and at trial. Asked why she refrained from looking at defendant during her testimony, Quijada responded: I can't. It's haunted me too long. I tried very hard to put the face out of my mind, and it's very painful.... Seeing him in person ... only confirms a nightmare that I have been living with for a long time. Dr. Rogers testified regarding the autopsy performed on George Martinez. Rogers described the cause of death as gunshot wounds of the chest. On cross-examination, Dr. Rogers testified that the autopsy report indicated the likelihood that the victim's four wounds (including two that appeared on the victim's hands) likely were the result of only two gunshots. Renold Verdugo, a Los Angeles County Deputy Sheriff, testified regarding his participation as one of the investigating officers in the aftermath of the shooting at the Fort Knots bar. Verdugo testified that the crime scene yielded two expended shell casings, determined to have been fired from the same nine-millimeter firearm. One bullet was recovered the following day from the crime scene; the other was found during the coroner's autopsy performed on the body of George Martinez, which Verdugo attended. Verdugo also supervised the collection of blood evidence (none of which subsequently was determined to have matched defendant's blood) and interviewed various witnesses. On cross-examination, Verdugo testified that Mario Medel described the person who was thrown out of the bar as having been a male Hispanic possibly in his 20's or 21 years old, five five to five six, I believe it was a hundred and forty pounds, dark hair and a short trimmed mustache. He also described [the suspect] as having a roundish face[, and] Americanized, one who possibly was here long enough to, let's say, have papers. Those were his impressions. Not a recent illegal alien or an undocumented alien. In the ensuing months, Verdugo and law enforcement officials who were investigating defendant's possible involvement in another case, compared defendant's photograph with the composite drawing made with the assistance of Barbara Quijada, noted the resemblance between the two, and recontacted the Fort Knots witnesses for the purpose of showing them a photographic lineup that included defendant's image. Gerald Jansen, a Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Homicide Inspector, testified that he showed the photographic lineup to certain witnesses to the Martinez killing. Barbara Quijada selected defendant's image from the lineup. On cross-examination, Jansen recalled that Mario Medel did not select anyone from the lineup, and one other witness was unable to choose between the image of defendant and that of another individual.