2nd Man Pleads Not Guilty in Killing

A second man charged in the killing of a 17-year-old San Carlos high school student pleaded not guilty Monday to charges of murder and battery after being arrested for the apparently hate-related stabbing death.

Michael Allen Dipaolo, 24, of Mission Hills, was arrested Friday and charged in the slaying of John Robert Wear and two other attacks. Municipal Judge Lawrence Stirling ordered Dipaolo held in lieu of $750,000.

An unemployed North Park man, Eddie Barton, 25, who is suspected of being the man who actually killed Wear, was arrested about six weeks ago. A preliminary hearing for both men is set for Aug. 21.

Although Dipaolo is not suspected of stabbing Wear, he is charged with participating in a series of three attacks on Dec. 13 that culminated with Wear’s death. All of the attacks appear to have been motivated by the victims’ “perceived sexual orientation,” according to prosecutors.

Court documents show that Dipaolo and Barton are charged with beating two men who were walking along University Avenue near the Uptown District. In the first incident, Jason Van Orden was hit in the face, thrown to the ground and kicked in the stomach after his attackers called him a “homo.”

Barton and Dipaolo are also accused of attacking Kenneth Keziah a few minutes later after he ignored statements from the two men: “Are you dating?” “Do you want to go home with me?” Keziah suffered a broken nose after being hit in the face.

Wear was killed near the corner of 10th Avenue and Essex Street as he walked with two friends to a coffee shop on University Avenue. A statement from San Diego Police Department Detective Rene Hill says that one of Wear’s friends, Bryan Baird, “was immediately hit in the face” after he asked the two men, “How’s it going?”

“The men began hitting and kicking John Wear,” according to the document. “Baird noticed one of the men pulling a knife away from Wear’s stomach. He then said to Wear, ‘Don’t cry, faggot,’ and started kicking him again.”

Baird attempted to assist Wear, but he fled after he was stabbed in the head and ordered to run away.

Hill’s statement also reports that a crying Dipaolo called a friend four days after the attack and said he had been involved in something “really bad,” and he “was there when it happened, but he didn’t do it.”

The friend also told investigators that Dipaolo “had told her he was a skinhead.”

In addition to murder, the two men are charged with battery and battery with serious bodily injury.