Stow Beating Suspects In Court For Preliminary Hearing
LOS ANGELES (CBS) — One of two men charged with beating a San Francisco Giants fan in the parking lot of Dodger Stadium on opening day last year called his mother after his arrest and told her he was involved "in that Dodger Stadium thing," a detective testified Wednesday.
The testimony came at the beginning of a hearing to determine if Louie Sanchez, 30, and Marvin Norwood, 31, both of Rialto, should stand trial for the March 31, 2011, beating of Bryan Stow.
The prosecution's first witness, Los Angeles police Detective Howard Jackson, testified that he interviewed Norwood for about three hours in July 2011 and allowed him to make a phone call.
The prosecution played a videotape of the phone call in which Norwood could be heard telling his mother, "I got arrested for that Dodger Stadium thing."
Norwood tells his mother he couldn't say much on the phone, but admitted, "I was involved ... To a certain extent, I was."
On cross-examination, the Robbery-Homicide detective said Norwood told investigators several times that he did not think he was involved in the same altercation as the one that critically injured Stow. Norwood also claimed Sanchez was attacked after pursuing Giants fans into the parking lot, the detective said.
The hearing before Los Angeles Superior Court Judge George G. Lomeli was expected to last as long as four days.
Sanchez and Norwood are charged with one felony count each of mayhem, assault by means likely to produce great bodily injury and battery with serious bodily injury, along with the allegation that the two inflicted great bodily injury on Stow.
Two witnesses testified today that Sanchez taunted a pair of Giants fans at the game by throwing peanuts and soda at them.
Marc Lu and Sheila Christenson each identified Sanchez as the man who was wearing a baseball cap backwards and sunglasses and throwing peanuts at a woman in a Giants T-shirt and a man in a orange T-shirt who were sitting along the third-base line during the game.
"It was not an accident, no," Lu said of the soda that was sprayed over two of the Giants fans with him after the game ended. "There was a little stare-down, no altercation."
He identified Norwood as the man who was "calming down" Sanchez, and said he recognized the two "definitely from seeing them at the game" rather than in news reports.
Christenson identified Sanchez as the man who was "throwing peanuts and yelling obscenities" at the Giants' fans throughout the game and then threw his soda at the two.
Stow, a father of two who was wearing a Giants jersey, suffered head trauma when he was attacked while walking with friends in the baseball stadium's parking lot after the Dodgers' opening-day win over the Giants.
Prosecutors contended in court papers filed last summer that the men initially shoved Stow, followed him after he and his friends walked away, punched him in the side of the head and then kicked him in the head after knocking him unconscious.
Stow is still being treated for his injuries.
Norwood and Sanchez were arrested last July. Giovanni Ramirez, who was arrested last May but never charged in the Stow beating, was later cleared of any involvement.
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