Trial Opens in Transsexual’s Death : Oxnard: The prosecution says the defendant shot the man six times after he saw him dancing with his brother in a bar.

An Oxnard man went on trial on a murder charge Thursday, accused in the point-blank shooting of a transsexual who had danced with his brother in an Oxnard bar.

The day after Christmas, 1987, at El Bohemio in Oxnard, Daniel Montenegro Delgado, 24, found his brother dancing with Rosando Sanchez-Reyes, a pre-operative transsexual who called himself Crystal, according to the prosecution.

During his opening statement, Deputy Dist. Atty. James D. Ellison said Delgado broke up the clinch between his brother and Sanchez-Reyes, 29, who was dressed as a woman and had grown breasts by taking female hormones.

Delgado then tried to provoke a fight, Ellison said.

“But Crystal wouldn’t fight,” Ellison said. “He said, ‘I’ll have the Oxnard police arrest you and tonight you’ll sleep in jail.’

“The defendant’s response was, ‘I may sleep in jail, but you will sleep in hell,’ ” Ellison said.

Delgado walked outside, returned moments later with a 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol hidden under a jacket over his arm and shot Sanchez-Reyes six times, Ellison said. Ellison told jurors that Delgado walked out of the bar and vanished.

When police in Glendale, Ariz., arrested Delgado on a fugitive warrant two years later, he confessed twice to the murder.

“The defendant told both detectives he had seen his brother dancing with this person he knew was a homosexual and he broke it up,” Ellison said. “He took it as a personal insult to his family, because his family were all men and they didn’t do things like that.”

Delgado’s brother, Loreno Montenegro, testified during the preliminary hearing that he did not know he was dancing with a man.

Deputy Public Defender Howard Asher conceded that Delgado killed Sanchez-Reyes.

But Asher told jurors, “You’ll hear of the general intoxication” of the victim and the defendant. “You’ll hear of threats that were made, of strong emotions of fear and panic and anger and shame that were generally boiling around and consumed both individuals that night.”

Bar owner Adan Sumano testified Thursday that he saw Delgado break up the dancing couple and then leave El Bohemio. Sumano said he was chatting at a table with Sanchez-Reyes when Delgado walked in moments later, shot Sanchez-Reyes and fled.

Sanchez-Reyes stood up with the impact of the bullets, then collapsed on the floor, said Sumano, who added that he dragged the body out of his bar and left it in the parking lot because he “became frightened, afraid.”

Dr. Ronald Halloran, Ventura County assistant coroner, testified that Sanchez-Reyes was shot six times at point-blank range, five times in the chest and once in the stomach. Jurors then examined autopsy photos of the bullet wounds in the victim’s torso.