Now in its third week, the trial for the alleged murder of Anthony Ibarra resumed in Santa Maria Juvenile Court the morning of Jan. 27 with defense attorneys cross-examining a crime scene technician videographer.
Angela Jorge, a crime scene tech with the Santa Maria Police Department, testified that on March 18, 2013, she filmed inside the house on the 1100 block of West Donovan Road, where 28-year-old Ibarra was allegedly murdered. Ibarra’s body was found a day later in the back of a U-Haul rental truck that was parked along a street in a residential neighborhood in Orcutt.
Defendants Ramon Maldonado, Reyes Gonzales, David Maldonado, Santos Sauceda, Anthony Solis, and Jason Castillo are being tried for the suspected gang murder of Ibarra, stemming from a drug debt.
On Jan. 27, defense attorneys asked Jorge several questions about the house’s floor plan, including the positions of the couch in the living room on the east end of the house and the living room’s door that opened up into the hallway. The purpose, according to one of the defense attorneys, was an attempt to corroborate the testimony of prosecution witnesses, including that of Angel Escobar, who gave an account of the moments leading up to the death of Ibarra.
In testimony given the week before, Escobar said that he was inside the kitchen and living room area of the house just moments before the death of Ibarra allegedly occurred, but said he didn’t directly witness the death.
David Bixby, the attorney representing David Murillo Maldonado, brought up Escobar’s statement about not actually witnessing Ibarra’s death when he was cross examining Jorge.
“People’s ability to see has become an important issue, has it not?” Bixby asked.
Jorge agreed: It was an important issue. She testified that the living room door was partially closed. She also testified that the floor plan of the house, referred to as exhibit 466, is as close to scale as possible, but that some of the furniture might not be.
Bixby said that if someone were seated on either arm of the couch, he or she wouldn’t be able to see anyone going down the hallway.
Escobar previously testified that he saw Ramon Maldonado, as well as several other defendants, emerge from another room, down the hallway in the house, and attack Ibarra.
During Jorge’s testimony on Jan. 27, she also fielded questions from defense attorneys about evidence collected from inside the U-Haul truck and a Thunderbird. Jorge said the fingerprints she processed, which were found on a microwave inside the U-Haul truck, didn’t belong to some of the defendants. She also testified that she didn’t find any stains on the three blue latex gloves and two pairs of black cotton and leather gloves found in a Thunderbird parked in the driveway of the house on Donovan.
The trial will continue on Jan. 29 and 30 at 8 a.m. in Santa Maria Juvenile Court.
This article appears in Jan 29 – Feb 5, 2015.