3 teens on trial for killing deliveryman
Jason...@virgin.net
3 teens on trial for killing
deliveryman
By Ramon Coronado
Bee Staff Writer
(Published Feb. 24, 1999)
As the daughter of the murder victim sat
weeping in a
crowded Sacramento courtroom, a prosecutor
described Tuesday how a 50-year-old pizza
delivery
man was set up, attacked and robbed of two
pizzas,
soda, a $9 check and a crumpled dollar bill.
"The door opens and Mr. Leopoldo Guevarra is
hit in
the face," Deputy District Attorney Lori Greene
said of
the Del Paso Heights attack. "He falls to the
ground, his
pockets are gone through, he is left on the
sidewalk,
then they eat the pizzas."
Everett Lanail McCoy, 17, Christopher Pierre
Cole, 16,
and Robert Ray Decamp, 15, are being prosecuted
as
adults in the July 30 robbery and fatal beating
of
Guevarra, who died 17 days after his skull was
fractured
in two places.
The trio also are charged with the robbery of
another
Del Paso Heights pizza delivery man only four
days
after Guevarra's attack. Valentine Demchuk
managed
to escape serious injury after giving up his
pizzas,
Greene said.
The prosecution asked jurors to find each
defendant
guilty of first-degree murder, relying on
California's
felony murder rule that makes accomplices as
guilty as the actual killer.
Defense attorneys for McCoy and Decamp declined
to give an opening
statement Tuesday, but Cole's public defender,
Tommy Clinkenbeard, said his
client never planned either of the robberies or
hit anyone.
"Merely being present at the scene is not a
crime," the defense attorney said.
He also urged jurors not to let the facts of
the case inflame their emotions and
cloud their judgment. That would be "an
injustice," Clinkenbeard said.
Guevarra, who had immigrated from the
Philippines about two years before the
attack, was working two pizza delivery jobs to
make ends meet.
He had a degree in accounting but -- like many
immigrants -- he had difficulty
finding a job befitting his education and
training, his family said.
Guevarra was killed while attempting to deliver
two large combination pizzas to
a vacant house on Lindsay Avenue.
The trio, who were at Decamp's home, had chosen
a nearby vacant house as
part of their plan to "jack the pizza man,"
Greene said.
After Guevarra knocked on the door with his
Domino's pizza delivery, he was
punched once in the eye by McCoy, Greene said.
He fell back, hitting his head
on the pavement.
Another nearby vacant house was used in the
second robbery. McCoy also was
the one who slugged Demchuk, who was deliving
on Lindsay Avenue for the
Pizza Guys, she said.
The teenagers, arrested after the second
robbery, gave separate statements
implicating each other, Greene said.
Those statements are expected to come out
through testimony. To protect the
constitutional right against self
incrimination, each defendant has his own jury,
which can hear testimony together or apart from
the other panels.