Starting a New Day
Teresa Preciado of Los Angeles, identified as the suspects girlfriend, told police that she had begun the fateful day in her home, north of Venice Boulevard, by starting to drink at 7 in the morning.
Ms. Preciado gave the following account of the days events:
By noon time, yearning for her boyfriend, she drove over to an apartment that he shared with a male friend in the 4100 block of Wade Street, near the park. There they spent the afternoon, listening to music and drinking.
The Crowd Grows
When Mr. Molanos roommate came home from a Las Vegas outing with his girlfriend around 4:30, the scene soon swelled into a four-way drinking fest.
By the dinner hour, supplies were running low. The two women drove over to the Vons Market on Centinela to restock their libation inventory.
After returning home, the women stepped outdoors to smoke, and for private conversation between themselves.
Looking to Chat
Around 7:20, as the sinking sun slid toward the ocean, Mr. Molano, who originally listed a Pico Boulevard address in Santa Monica, joined the ladies. He was eager to get Ms. Preciados attention. The feeling was not mutual. She tried to shoo him away. The ladies were engaging in girl talk, which annoyed him. Maybe the two women were reminiscing about how Ms. Preciado and Mr. Molano had met three months earlier at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting.
Rejected, according to Ms. Preciado, the hefty Mr. Molano bounded toward the sidewalk, vanishing quickly from view.
Strolling into a Crime
At that exact moment, three disparate Hispanic gentlemen Noel Diaz, 19, Francisco Javier Melchor, 51, and Mario Monzon Fernandez, late 30s, known to friends as Mario Morales were on their way from Culver West Park, walking north on the western side of Wade Street.
Mr. Diaz told police that from nowhere, a stocky, middle-aged Hispanic later identified as Mr. Molano, emerged from between two buildings in the 4100 block.
He was motioning to the three of them to stop.
Obeying the Holdup Man
Not suspecting how perilously close they might be to losing their lives, the three saunterers complied.
Mr. Diaz immediately noticed the suspect holding a folding knife with a six-inch blade. The holdup man was plain, and harshly, spoken. Give me your money, cuckolds, he barked in Spanish.
As the elder member of the group, Mr. Melchor retrieved his wallet, unfolded it and showed the holdup man he was fresh out of cash.
Next Victim
Turning toward the teenaged Mr. Diaz, the suspect tried again. This was too much for Mr. Morales, who was living on the income of a day laborer. He inserted himself between the shaken Mr. Diaz and the menacing suspect. Forcefully proclaiming that the kid did not have any money, either, Mr. Morales told the suspect to leave him alone.
Angered more than he already was, the suspect threateningly advanced toward Mr. Morales. Demonstrating his fatal ambidexterity, he kicked Mr. Morales as hard as he could with his left leg while slamming a knife into the victims upper left chest area, a wound that shortly would snuff out the immigrants life.
Another Tangle
Mr. Melchor, the elder in the group, had tried to separate himself by stepping across the street during the fracas.
But the suspect, with a budding murder on his hands, followed him. Summoning his full strength, the 5-foot-6, 185-pound holdup man slammed a foot as hard as he could swing it into Mr. Melchors groin.
That was his best, and his final, shot.
Emptyhanded, possibly scared, and with a looming murder rap dogging him, the suspect turned away and briskly bridged the short distance to his apartment.
Once more or less safely inside, his roommate said Mr. Molano hollered, Im rollin, according to his roommate.
Even, however, in the gathering twilight, certain eyes on the family-dominated street were espying the killer.
In Pursuit of Help
As the suspect disappeared from view of the victims, Mr. Diaz and Mr. Melchor, frightened, angry, chasing jumbled thoughts through their badly rattled minds, each took one side of Mr. Morales.
Walking, pulling and dragging, they managed to get close enough to the much traveled intersection of expansive Washington Boulevard.
Mr. Melchor yelled at a passing motorist to call 9-1-1.
A Common Address
The relationship of the three men to each other was not exactly clear, except that Mr. Diaz told police he used to live in the 11700 block of Culver Boulevard in a building that also housed a family member of Mr. Morales.
There, police found a 23-year-old man who said he was a nephew of the murder victim, that Mr. Morales was his mothers brother.
He further said the victims name was not Mario Morales but Mario Monzon Fernandez, known to family and friends as Popeye.
Relatives in Mexico
As his only relative in the United States, the young man said he was not close to Mr. Fernandez. He told police he seldom saw his uncle, and he did not know his age.
He promised to inform Mr. Fernandez family in Guanajuato, Mexico.
A little more than an hour after Culver City police responded to the crime scene, a tipster, residing in the Wade Street neighborhood, telephoned in a clue. He said he had a strong idea of who the assailant was.
Free for Less Than a Day
On the following day at the lunch hour, police arrested Mr. Molano, but not his girlfriend, as the two of them left her Vinton Avenue apartment. Mr. Molano has been in jail ever since, facing a first-degree murder charge.
