On July 28, 2015, Vicente Cantu and two friends planned to go ‘Parker hunting, the term for Northwest gang members seeking to beat up rivals from West Park in Santa Maria.
Instead, 17-year-old Oscar Joaquin ended up dead after a violent attack where he allegedly was killed by members of the MS-13 gang.
Cantu, with the gang moniker Payaso, testified this week in the Santa Maria Superior Court trial of five men charged with murder and other crimes allegedly linked to the transnational criminal gang Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, which is known for especially violent attacks.
They have been accused of killing 10 men and attempting to kill 14 others over several years with most of the crimes happening in the Santa Maria Valley.
The five defendants, their gang monikers and their attorneys are Juan Carlos Serrano Urbina (“Peligro”) with attorney Steve Balash; Marcos Manuel Sanchez Torres (“Silent”) with attorney Stephen Dunkle; Tranquilino Robles Morales (“Bandit”), represented by attorney Andrew Jennings; Luis Mejia Orellana (“Smiley”), represented by attorney Chris Ames; and Juan Carlos Lozano Membreno (“Psycho”) with attorney Adrian Andrade.
On the night of Joaquin’s killing, Cantu said they intended to gang bang or search for rivals to fight. In addition to Joaquin, known as Damage, the third person was Kevin Ramnarine, a gang member known as Danger from Loa Angeles but staying in Santa Maria.
The trio ended up walking in a neighborhood, where Cantu and Ramnarine carried machetes while Joaquin had a baseball bat. A car passed the trio, then made a U-turn and parked, with two men getting out to approach the trio.
He recalled that he “squared up with one,” who ended up having a bat.
“He pulls it out and he tries to hit me with it,” Cantu said, adding that he pulled a short machete from his sleeve and began swinging it.
Shots rang out — “all of a sudden I heard pop, pop, pop” — and he saw Joaquin flee.
“I see Oscar running between two cars and I just booked it,” Cantu said, adding that he believed his friend had not been injured.
Ramnarine had already fled.
“I just saw him running so I’m thinking if they’re running, they’re OK,” he added, not knowing that Joaquin collapsed in the road near the intersection of Western Avenue and Barrett Avenue.
Dr. Manny Montez, a Santa Barbara County forensic pathologist, said Joaquin had been shot six times, at least two causing significant internal injuries. In addition to having his hand amputated, he had a number of other serious sharp force injuries.
“This is not a steak knife. This is not something that’s in your kitchen,” Montez said of the weapon used.
One by one, defense attorneys, starting with Balash, questioned Cantu, bringing up the witness’s criminal activity he had matter-of-factly discussed.
Cantu, who faced a nine-year sentence, was granted immunity in exchange for testifying in the case.
At one point, Cantu objected to the questioning, saying that he realized it’s a defense attorney’s job to make him look bad, leading Balash to say the witness was doing a good job making himself look bad.
While his plea deal requires him to obey all laws, Cantu admitted using drugs, suggesting it wasn’t a violation of his deal.
“It’s breaking the law, but it’s not breaking the law,” Cantu said.
“Is it fair to say it’s not breaking the law if you’re not caught?” Dunkle asked.
Later, defense attorney Andrade asked the witness to display gang signs.
“You want me to throw gang signs to you? It’s not incriminating myself, is it?” he asked, prompting laughter in the courtroom.
He also admitted firing a gun at rival gang members multiple times but didn’t believe he ever hit anybody, saying, “I’m not a good shot.”
“Apparently,” Andrade responded.
Several neighbors also testified about hearing the shooting, and seeing one male down in the road yelling for help.
“I think he was asking for his mother,” one woman said.
Officer Sofia Marques arrived at the scene and recalled the injured teen rolling on the ground as if he was trying to get up. She testified that he repeatedly cried out, “Help me. I’m going to die.”
“I was reassuring him as best as I could,” Marques said.
Since opening statements in November, Senior Deputy District Attorney Ann Bramsen and colleague Peter Telesca have continued to present evidence to make the case that defendants committed violent crimes to benefit MS-13, with messages exchanged, sometimes in code words, about each killing. In recent weeks, the testimony has focused on the series of killings with jurors seeing autopsy photos and crime scene photos.
Days after Joaquin’s killing, one defendant, Peligro, searched for online media stories about the incident, according to testimony.
As months dragged on without an arrest, Santa Maria police held a walk in the neighborhood and distributed fliers in hopes of getting more information and spurring suspects to talk since officers were conducting wiretap operations, Sgt. Scott Casey said.
“You know we have to be on alert all the time since it was hot here,” a gang member known as Smiley said in a February 2016 message after the police-led event.
Testimony for the jury trial in Judge John McGregor’s courtroom is scheduled to resume Monday morning.
— Noozhawk North County editor Janene Scully can be reached at jscully@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.