Closing statements were presented Monday in court in San Jose in the murder trial of an unnamed 13-year-old suspect who is accused of fatally stabbing 15-year-old David Gutierrez on Valentine's Day 2025.
The killing of Gutierrez made headlines for months around the Bay, after details emerged that the suspects ranged in age from 13 to 18, and the motivation for the stabbing was likely gang-related. Gutierrez, a good student who had no gang affiliations, had arrived at Santana Row that evening for a date with his girlfriend, and he was wearing a red jacket — an indication that he could be a Norteño gang member — which his family said he was wearing because of the holiday.
The group of five teens, who were also wearing red, allegedly descended on Gutierrez, assuming he was a Norteño — as KRON4 earlier reported, investigators learned that the boys were affiliated with the Sureños, who typically wear blue, but they were wearing red that day as a ruse to disguise their true affiliation.
The 13-year-old, who was identified early on in the investigation as the wielder of the knife that killed Guttierez, has been on trial for over a month, and the case will soon be in the hands of the jury.
As Bay Area News Group reports, public defender Jennifer Redding argued in her closing statement that her client, now 14, acted in self-defense and could reasonably have assumed that Guttierez was also armed.
Redding's defense included evidence that Gutierrez's girlfriend had helped to spur and escalate the fight between the two boys, even allegedly saying, "You're going to fight my boyfriend one on one," and that the two had been known to get in public conflicts with others. Gutierrez was an aspiring boxer.
According to the public defender, her client was conditioned by his upbringing in a rough neighborhood of San Jose to be fearful and impulsive, and that violence like what occurred that February day was "recreational" for boys like him.
Redding also cast doubt on prosecutors' claim that Gutierrez was unarmed, suggesting that he may have had a knife in his pocket that got handed off to his girlfriend before police arrived. "Is he holding a cell phone or a knife? I don’t know. The defense doesn’t have to prove he had a knife," Redding said in court, per Bay Area News Group.
The defense also reportedly presented evidence that Gutierrez and his girlfriend exchanged text messages in which they acknowledged that a piece of his red clothing could be mistaken for "Norte" affiliation.
Prosecutors say there is zero evidence that Gutierrez had any gang ties, and family members say he was a kind and gentle boy.
If found guilty, the 13-year-old is likely only to serve eight months for the crime in juvenile hall due to state statutes governing juvenile offenders under 14, something that has enraged the victim's family and prompted protests outside the court that you can see in NBC Bay Area's coverage below.
The only suspect in the case to be convicted so far, also a juvenile at age 16, was sentenced last summer to two years. The only adult charged, who was 18 at the time, Emanuel Sanchez-Damian of Campbell, has not yet gone to trial.
