Prosecutors played a surveillance camera video Monday of a drunken melee outside a Santa Rosa Avenue restaurant that left one man dead and another wounded.
The video trained on El Puente Cantina shows men spilling from a patio area during a Dec. 3 brawl, people running in the parking lot and what were described as muzzle flashes as two figures fall to the ground.
None of the participants' faces are clear but a surviving witness identified two of them as the men charged with murder in the case -- Jose Campos-Mendoza and Alfonso Ramirez-Mendoza, both 18 of Santa Rosa.
Witness Julian Loeza, 21, who was shot in the arm and hip, pointed them out on the video but was reluctant to say who pulled the trigger.
"I'm not going to answer that question," said Loeza, who was subpoenaed to testify. "For my own safety."
But under threat of jail from Judge Ken Gnoss, Loeza said the person who shot and killed Cristopher "Beto" Medina, 23, of Santa Rosa, was wearing a red shirt. The same person shot him, he testified.
He then admitted telling a police detective the night of the shooting that Campos-Mendoza -- the brother-in-law of his sister -- was the gunman.
"What was it that you told the officer?" prosecutor Craig Brooks asked.
"That Jose Campos shot him," Loeza said.
The testimony and video came during a preliminary hearing to determine if there is enough evidence for Campos-Mendoza and Ramirez-Mendoza to stand trial.
Both are charged with a count of first-degree murder, two counts of attempted murder and a firearms charge and face life prison sentences.
Campos-Mendoza, who was 17 years old at the time, is being tried as an adult.
The defendants sat in court in blue jail uniforms, their backs to a packed audience. Deputies ejected two men believed to be taunting the victims' family members.
Loeza testified he spent two weeks in the hospital after the killing that happened after a night of drinking beer and tequila.
He said he arrived at the cantina after midnight to meet a girl and got in an argument with Ramirez-Mendoza, who was sitting with Campos-Mendoza and a former co-defendant, Daniel Calderon-Escobido, 23, of Petaluma.
A fight involving a number of people erupted in the outside patio and Loeza testified he tried to flee by jumping over a fence.
But he said Ramirez-Mendoza shot him with pepper spray. At some point, he said Medina came to his aid, pulling him across the parking lot to a nearby gas station.
Then he heard shots.
"I saw Cristopher lay down," Loeza said. "I got shot, too."
The hearing continues today with testimony from Calderon-Escobido, who admitted being an accessory in exchange for a two-year county jail sentence.
You can reach Staff Writer Paul Payne at 568-5312 or paul.payne@pressdemocrat.com
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