A 28-year-old man was convicted Monday of first-degree murder for repeatedly stabbing a fellow passenger in the head with a knife on a Montebello Public Transit bus.
Manuel Ortiz Jr., of Montebello, was initially charged with attempted murder and aggravated mayhem, but the criminal complaint was amended after 22-year-old Austin Angelo Zavala died about two months after the April 9, 2018, attack.
A nine-man, three-woman jury deliberated for just under an hour before reaching a guilty verdict and finding a knife use allegation to be true.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Leslie Swain scheduled an Oct. 4 sentencing date for the defendant, who faces up to 30 years to life in prison, according to the District Attorney’s Office.
During closing arguments, Deputy District Attorney Marlene Martinez said the attack was unprovoked and Zavala “had no idea what was coming to him.”
Zavala was talking on his cell phone when Ortiz walked up, stabbed him in the head, pulled the knife out and then did the same thing at least three more times, the prosecutor said.
“Austin Zavala was sitting on a bus on his way to college … when the human being at the end of this table committed this cowardly act,” Martinez told the jury. “He left Austin Zavala in a hospital for two months suffering.”
She didn’t offer a theory for why Ortiz attacked an apparent stranger shortly after boarding at an East Los Angeles stop at Whittier Boulevard and Gerhart Avenue.
“We don’t have to prove motive,” the prosecutor said. “He could very well have a motive in his head and we just don’t know it.”
When Ortiz fled, he pulled the knife out of his victim’s head, but left behind a blue bag that contained fingerprints and DNA evidence, according to Martinez. She said “every little piece of evidence” in the bag pointed to the defendant’s guilt, while DNA, fingerprints and Ortiz’ cell phone put him at the crime scene.
Defense attorney Kimberly Greene argued the prosecution case was built on circumstantial evidence not strong enough to overcome reasonable doubt. No murder weapon was offered at trial and the DNA came from a Gatorade bottle that could have been recycled and picked up by anyone, Greene said.
“They want to pick and choose and cherry pick” the evidence, Greene told jurors. “It is not your job just to take everything at face value.”
Jurors saw video of the attack during the trial, but Greene said the killer shown there wasn’t her client, but someone physically similar.
A physical resemblance shouldn’t be enough to convict a man, she told the panel.
Only three witnesses on the bus testified, out of at least a dozen people visible on the video, and those witnesses never saw the attacker head-on, according to the defense attorney.
“You should have doubts and if you have doubts, you must vote not guilty,” Greene told jurors.
In her rebuttal, the prosecutor accused the defense of trying to “throw up a smokescreen and distract you from everything.”
Martinez urged the jurors to use their common sense and asked them to find Ortiz guilty of first-degree murder.
Before deliberations began, the judge reread a portion of the jury instructions, including the information on circumstantial evidence versus direct evidence.
“Neither is necessarily more reliable than the other,” Swain told the panel.
Ortiz has convictions in four prior cases dating back to 2014. He was arrested three days after the stabbing and has remained behind bars since then on $2.4 million bail.
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