Rival gang members in Gainesville shadowboxed with drive-by insults, rallied their troops by cell phone and braced for a showdown at dawn, prosecutors said.
"There was an individual killed in this fight. Again, this was not a fight between preschoolers or at a football game," said Wanda Vance, Hall County assistant district attorney. "Everyone knew a storm was brewing. When they met up at 5 a.m., they were ready to fight."
That's how prosecutors introduced their case against Fernando Acosta and Juan Pablo Hurtado on Tuesday in Superior Court Judge Jason J. Deal's Hall County courtroom.
The men are charged with participation in criminal street gang activity as members of SUR 13 and fighting with men affiliated with two other gangs, BOE-23 and La Onda. The physical confrontation at the Lenox Park Apartments parking lot on June 13, 2010, resulted in the death of Daniel Adame, a friend of the defendants.
Adame was struck by a vehicle, dragged across the parking lot and later pronounced dead at Northeast Georgia Regional Medical Center, lawyers and investigators said.
Acosta was struck and seriously injured, too.
The defendants' lawyers said in their opening statements that Adame was an aggressor in the confrontation, someone Hurtado and Acosta tried to quiet as tensions between the groups intensified that night.
"Forget what your school teachers told you - that it doesn't matter who started the fight - because the law says it does," said Arturo Corso, the lawyer defending Acosta. "The evidence will show my client did nothing but fight back ... He was assaulted, he only hit back in defending himself and (Adame)."
Both Corso and Hurtado's attorney, Jerry C. Carter Jr., described how the men spent most of the night drinking and socializing before being driven home by Acosta's brother. The defendants, Carter said, were confronted in an ambush at the Lenox complex where Hurtado lived.
Prosecutors stressed the brawl that ensued was one they all participated in.
"We expect you're going to hear, ‘Everyone was fighting.' Because this was a mutual fight. This was an affray," Vance said. "When in a gang and participating (in a fight), that's when there's a crime."
Nine men were arrested and indicted in the days and weeks following the incident. Only one of them, Juan Villanueva, was charged in connection with Adame's death.
A grand jury accused Villanueva with first degree vehicular homicide as well as serious injury by vehicle for striking and injuring Acosta. Villanueva is expected to face trial soon.
Several more of the cases have closed in recent months.
Wilson O. Almendares and Jose E. Martinez each pleaded guilty to criminal street gang activity and affray last October and December, respectively. A jury found Eliborio Andrade guilty of the same charges in November.
The men may testify during the current trial, which attorneys referenced in their opening statements.
Hurtado's lawyer presented Almendares, in particular, as the instigator and mastermind behind the violence that June night.
"In the adult world it's a little bit different. It does matter who started it," Carter said. "It was more than a fight. It was a military operation led by a very experienced general."
Prosecutors called agent Joe Amerling to the witness stand first.
A Gainesville Police Department investigator and 14-year veteran of the Gainesville-Hall County Gang Task Force, Amerling testified on the characteristics of gangs with specific details about the three involved in the June fight.
He was called to work the case early that morning and began conducting interviews with the men officers believed were involved. Several of the suspects were found receiving treatment at the hospital, Amerling said.
Once at the police department, the groups were separated into different makeshift waiting areas, the investigator said, and he began questioning them individually.
His interviews lasted for more than 10 hours. He said his focus remained constant.
"My main goal of every interview that morning was to determine how the death of Mr. Adame occurred," Amerling said.