MARTINEZ — The trial has started for a Concord resident accused of fatally shooting a teenager and wounding a woman in an unrelated shooting weeks earlier, allegedly to impress MS-13 members in San Francisco.
Kristhiam Uceda, 24, is charged with murdering 17-year-old Lawrence Janson in a 2017 shooting outside Olympic High School in Concord. Prosecutors say it was the culmination of violent acts committed by Uceda and others who were working to start their own MS-13 subset in Concord, but needed to prove themselves to an established clique in San Francisco.
“They have to prove to the gang that they’re willing to commit acts of violence,” Deputy District Attorney Kevin Bell told jurors at the start of trial Monday morning. “The fist fights (Uceda) and his friends had been committing weren’t enough.”
Uceda’s lawyer, Christopher Varnell, made a brief opening statement where he encouraged jurors to be critical of the government’s theory and its witnesses, several of whom were involved in the same acts of violence and accepted plea deals or leniency in exchange for their testimony. He encouraged jurors to not make assumptions and detach themselves from Bell’s “very emotional” opening statement.
The trial has been a long time coming. Uceda and five others were charged with murder and participation in various violent acts in 2017, but all Uceda’s co-defendants have since accepted plea deals. Uceda himself came close to taking a plea deal in 2021, which would have gotten him a sentence of 29 years to life in prison, but on the day it was supposed to happen he refused to leave his jail cell.
Janson’s death on Nov. 6, 2017 was preceded by acts of violence throughout 2016-17, between the group of aspiring MS-13 members, who claimed the color blue, and a group of kids at Mount Diablo High School that associated with the rival Norteño gang, which uses the color red. Janson was not a gang member, but was perceived as a rival nonetheless, authorities say.
The rivalry between MS-13 and the Norteños is ongoing and far from limited to the East Bay. Last month, two members of the MS-13 subset based in San Francisco’s Mission District were sentenced to federal prison for playing different roles in the murder of a Norteño at Gray Whale Cove. One of them had been a member of the so-called Big Gangsters clique in El Salvador before coming to the Bay Area and joining the Mission subset, authorities say.
During the 2016-17 school year, there were several fistfights and other signs of a brewing gang rivalry involving Norteño, Sureños, and MS-13 associates, who hung out near the art building at Mount Diablo High, Bell said. School officials attempted to intervene by holding conflict mediation groups, which were attended by Janson and several of Uceda’s friends, among others.
In 2017, weeks before allegedly fatally shooting Janson, Uceda shot and wounded a homeless woman at Ellis Lake Park in Concord while aiming at some people who were wearing red, Bell claimed. Uceda and his friends used two cars, and filmed the shooting so they could show MS-13 members in San Francisco and prove their worth, Bell said.
The day of the homicide, Janson was hanging out with three friends at Olympic High School when two cars full of the MS-13 associates pulled up. Uceda, carrying the same .22 caliber pistol he allegedly used in the park shooting, yelled “MS-13, (expletive),” and fired five times while the group of friends ran away, striking Janson in the back, according to Bell.
Janson was able to hop two fences before he collapsed, Bell said. Before he went unconscious from a fatal wound to the lung, he told his friend, “I don’t want to die.” A janitor saw the commotion and called 911. Paramedics attempted to save Janson’s life but were unsuccessful.
“As this was happening, the defendant and his friends were celebrating,” Bell said.
Source: www.mercurynews.com