A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge held a Sylmar man to answer for two murder charges at the preliminary hearing for one of two suspects in the 2023 shooting deaths of Brian Fabrico Chevez and Camron Stokes in Newhall.
Deputy District Attorney David Nary of the L.A. County District Attorney’s Office described 20-year-old Anthony Martinez Ortiz as the getaway driver for murders committed at the community pool inside of The Villages apartment in Newhall, according to transcripts from the hearing at the San Fernando Courthouse.
Steven Omar Rosas, 20, also of Sylmar and Ortiz’s friend since the sixth grade, has pleaded not guilty to the same charges, with the prosecution alleging Rosas was the shooter in the incident.
Martinez Ortiz pleaded not guilty Tuesday at a formal arraignment, according to Superior Court records online.
James Blatt, Ortiz’s attorney, said his client was not a gang member and didn’t know what was going to happen after he parked his car at the apartment complex off Valle Del Oro and Rosas got out of the vehicle, according to transcripts available online.
Blatt questioned the story of the state’s first witness, a 16-year-old former member of the Brown Familia gang, who testified at the time of the shooting that he lived in regular fear as a 13-year-old living a neighborhood considered territory of the rival Newhall 13 gang.
Blatt said he thought it was “interesting” that the witness, identified on the stand only by his first name because he is a minor, happened to be in the alleged shooter’s gang at the time of the murder. Both the witness and Rosas would have known there were affiliated rival gang members out by the pool on March 18, 2023, according to Blatt.
Blatt said he was the one who told the DA’s Office to speak with that witness, a now-former resident of The Village. The teen testified that he was buying a marijuana vape pen from Rosas just before the shooting.
Alleged gang affiliations played central to the claims from both sides.
The prosecution presented testimony from the victims’ social media posts just prior to their deaths. Nary then had a local gang detective describe in detail what the hand symbols meant in previous posts from Rosas that included Ortiz, and that it was common for gang members to watch each other’s online activity.
“What he’s trying to do is guilt by association,” Blatt said, adding the prosecution couldn’t produce any concrete evidence tying Martinez Ortiz to the gang or the shooting.
“I have 37 first cousins. That is a lot. Some of those took the wrong turn,” Blatt said. He said that doesn’t mean he loves those cousins any less or has knowledge of any prior criminal activity they might be involved in when they’re together.
Martinez Ortiz didn’t have the same motive Rosas did, Blatt said. Rosas was the victim of a gang shooting that left him with a broken leg more than a year before the March 2023 incident, according to other photos shared on social media presented at the hearing.
“You know, most of these crimes are spontaneous. There is no thinking. There is no logic or planning,” he said.
“What evidence is there that (Martinez Ortiz) had knowledge before?” Blatt said, arguing against one of the main elements necessary for a premeditated murder charge, in the transcript.
“And there’s not one darn bit of evidence that my client had knowledge, knowledge of what he was going to do — Mr. Rosas,” Blatt said to the judge, near the hearing’s conclusion.
Nary assailed Ortiz’s differing versions of what happened that day given to Homicide Bureau investigators during multiple interviews. Nary said it didn’t make sense for Ortiz to be in pictures posted on social media with the gun prior to the murder, making gang signs with Rosas, if he wasn’t affiliated, according to the transcript.
Nary also said the narrative painted by Blatt did not jibe with the facts presented from the traffic stop, where Ortiz was pulled over blocks from the shooting in his white Mustang, minutes after the incident, by deputies responding to the call of shots fired at the complex.
During a search of Ortiz’s car, a gang detective found a .45-caliber gun ballistically matched to shells found at the murder scene, inside a cutaway that had to have been made ahead of time, likely for such concealment, according to the detective’s testimony.
“Mr. Rosas would not, especially at 11 o’clock in the day, go and kill these two individuals without knowing that he has a getaway driver, without knowing that he has a homie that is going to be waiting for him with the car already backed in and ready to get away,” Nary said at the conclusion of his argument in the transcript.
There was also more circumstantial evidence, all pointing to Ortiz’s guilt, according to Nary.
The two best friends shared words of support for each other while getting arrested, Nary said to the judge, which is not something an innocent person would say to someone who had just implicated them in a life-altering crime.
“If Anthony Martinez Ortiz is not aware of this, Steven Rosas has just done the most horrible thing, and Anthony Martinez Ortiz wouldn’t be able to say, by no stretch of the imagination, ‘I love you,’ to this person who has just done this to him,” Nary said. “But the fact that that did occur, and he would only admit that if that were true, is a huge piece of circumstantial evidence in this case.”
Judge David Stuart said his job was not to determine guilt or innocence, but “whether there is probable cause that Mr. Martinez Ortiz was involved in the murder,” according to the transcript.
“Sure looked like he threw the gang sign. The gun is clearly visible,” Stuart said, referring to the social media posts from Rosas prior to the shooting, which showed both defendants in the Mustang, according to the transcript. “(Ortiz) is at least an associate of Brown Familia at that point.”
Stuart said the prosecution’s assertion was “reasonable,” also referring to evidence presented that Martinez Ortiz lied to law enforcement several times with differing stories of the same events. He referred to that evidence as circumstantial, but added that was enough for a preliminary hearing.
“This is a crime of opportunity,” Stuart said, summarizing the arguments he heard during the several-day hearing, before holding Martinez Ortiz to answer. “They saw these two rival gang members while they were on their way to deliver this vape pen.”
Martinez Ortiz is due back in court March 2 for his next hearing in the case.
