An accused gang member and his friend allegedly traveled from San Pedro into Wilmington to target the gang member’s rivals — but wound up fatally shooting a volunteer cook for a Summer Night Lights event at the Wilmington Recreation Center in 2023, a prosecutor told a jury at the start of their trial.
The event was meant as a gathering where young people felt safe from getting recruited by gang members.
Deputy District Attorney Duke Ho told the Long Beach Superior Court panel that Sergio Esteban, now 30, and Estevan Hernandez, 29, planned out the attack: They pumped gas at a San Pedro ARCO station, then circled the park twice before stopping their minivan a half-block away so that Hernandez and a third man could sneak through two alleyways and open fire on a crowd near the park’s baseball field.
Esteban was identified by a prosecutor as a gang member during opening statements that concluded on Friday, Dec., 5, when some testimony was heard.
A witness and a Los Angeles police officer working security at the event each heard five shots, Ho said. The witness, standing in an alley, then saw two men run toward him, then make a left turn to head north on a connecting alley and back to their minivan.
One man, matching Hernandez’s description, yelled “Boo!” to the witness as they ran by, he would tell police, Ho said.
Defense attorneys said the evidence would not point to their clients as being responsible for the murder.
“We don’t know who killed Jose Quezada, and at the end of this trial, you won’t know either,” Estaban’s attorney, George Moyer, told the panel of six men and six women.
Doug Miranda, representing Hernandez, told the jury what he said prosecutors would offer up: “They’re going to be presenting evidence but never connecting it to the actual murder. They’re going to make you speculate.”
Miranda said Hernandez is not involved with a gang.
Los Angeles police Officer Jacqueline Lopez, at the other end of the park, heard the gunshots and ran toward them, Ho said. She radioed descriptions of two men running to an awaiting minivan, with one matching Hernandez’s.
A third man, Sergio Esteban’s brother Christian, is also believed to be involved in the shooting, but is on the run, prosecutors said.
Quezada, a 46-year-old Wilmington resident, was just hanging out with other people on a sidewalk along the park when struck.
A longtime community volunteer who would also cook for families grieving the loss of loved ones, said those who knew him, he was married and a father of three boys. He had volunteered coaching basketball at the park, said his wife, Sandy De La Mora, during testimony.
“This was a modest event,” prosecutor Ho said during his opening statement, “before the defendants, Sergio Esteban and Estevan Hernandez, saw an opportunity to notch a kill in their war.”
Cellphone evidence would show the three defendants went back to Hernandez’s San Pedro home following the shooting, Ho said.
He told the jury that a combination of cellphone evidence, surveillance video and witness statements led to the arrests of Sergio Esteban and Hernandez. Esteban also made statements to a jailhouse informant when he did not deny his involvement and acknowledged he was the minivan’s driver that night, according to the prosecutor and audio played in court.
Defense attorney Moyer told the jury there was one person who saw the shooting and described a single man dressed in all black who entered a black vehicle, which did not match the descriptions of Hernandez or Christian Esteban.
While Sergio Esteban said he drove the minivan that night, he never said anything about any plan to kill someone, nor knowing anyone who was going to kill someone that night, Moyer said.
The gun was never found.
Miranda asked the jury to not “be persuaded by nonsense,” and said the jury would see no identification of shooters, fingerprints, DNA or video of the shooting.
Officer Lopez, a senior lead officer, has worked for eight years in Wilmington. During her testimony, she said she saw 20 to 25 members of a gang that is a rival to the one that prosecutors say Esteban belonged to at the event prior to the shooting.
The case against Hernandez was dropped after a preliminary hearing when a judge said the prosecution’s evidence was “too thin” last year, but prosecutors refiled the case and another judge in June ruled it could move to trial. The cases against each man were consolidated.
The trial was anticipated to last about a week before the jury begins deliberations.