Fatal Gunshot Was Accident, Suspect Says

Just hours after a 23-year-old carpenter was shot outside a Ventura sushi restaurant, Jose “JB” Martinez confessed to the slaying but said his weapon fired by accident.

“The gun went off,” he said in a taped interview with police. “I never pulled the trigger. I never meant to kill someone.”

Prosecutors played the tape Thursday during the second day of a two-day preliminary hearing in Ventura County Superior Court.

The hearing ended with Judge Charles McGrath holding Martinez to answer to second-degree murder charges in the slaying of Steven Dale Jenkins. The 19-year-old Martinez also faces a special allegation that he used a firearm. If convicted, he could face a maximum of 40 years to life in prison.

Jenkins, who played in a band and hoped to one day become a dentist, died Dec. 16 at Ventura County Medical Center, the morning after the shooting.

Senior Deputy Dist. Atty. Jim Ellison presented testimony that Martinez shot Jenkins after a heated argument with several patrons outside Juro’ Cho’ Sushi on Seaward Avenue. But Ellison said he did not charge Martinez with first-degree murder because there wasn’t enough evidence to show that the killing was premeditated.

Defense attorney Robert Schwartz admitted that his client should not have gone to the sushi restaurant with a gun. But he said that when Martinez was outside the restaurant, he faced an angry, drunk crowd that was poised to attack him. Schwartz argued that his client should face charges of voluntary manslaughter, not murder.

“We’ve got these guys out of control, charging after him,” Schwartz said. “These people are physically attacking him. If there was ever an accidental shooting in this world, this was it.”

Martinez, who had just moved to the area from Nevada and worked at Target, told police that the night started when a few people approached his car while he was driving on Seaward Avenue. The men told him he was “disrespecting” their neighborhood, and one threw a rock through his car window.

Martinez became angry and went to the Shores Motel--where his parents were renting a room--and told them that he wanted to find the people who did it. Then, he told police, he went to Wal-Mart and bought bullets for his 9-millimeter gun so he could “defend himself,” and he walked down the street with his stepfather and brother-in-law.

They entered the sushi restaurant but were quickly pushed out by a group of people. When the shouting crowd surrounded him, Martinez pulled out his gun and fired a warning shot, he told police. Then somebody hit him twice, he said, and the gun went off.

Martinez’s brother-in-law, Matthew Gillespie, testified that the 15 to 20 people confronting them were an “angry mob” who acted like they were going to attack him. Martinez looked extremely scared, he testified.

“They seemed threatening to my life and to JB’s life,” Gillespie said. “I thought I was going to die.”

Other witnesses, however, testified that Martinez was the one who initiated the confrontation. Jonathan Damon and Michael Mooney testified that Martinez had an angry look in his eyes when he came to the sushi bar, pulled out the gun and started shouting threats. Damon, Mooney and several others followed him outside to try to get him to drop the gun, they testified, but Martinez raised his arm and fired the first shot.

“Everybody in the circle stepped back a little bit,” said Damon, a friend of Jenkins. “We realized this guy isn’t just a tough guy with a gun. He’s serious.”

When Jenkins tried to knock the gun out of Martinez’s hand, Damon said, Martinez fired a second shot and Jenkins fell to the ground. Damon said he could see blood on Jenkins’ face and a pool of blood forming under his head.

Martinez looked shocked and said he didn’t mean to shoot Jenkins, witnesses said. He then ran up the street. Mooney, Jenkins’ cousin, testified that he chased Martinez to his car, where the teen pointed the gun at him and said, “Please don’t make me do this again” before driving away.

Police arrested Martinez a short time later.