UPDATE NO. 3, NOV. 18, 2:11 P.M.: Robert Gabriel Rodgers could receive the death penalty in the fatal stabbing of Ceaser Ramirez-Rafael at Volcano Tea House in Garden Grove on Friday, based on the charges filed against the accused.
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Rodgers, 20, of Anaheim, has been charged with murder and special circumstance allegations of lying in wait. Special circumstances make a defendant eligible for the death penalty if convicted. It will be up to prosecutors to decide whether they will seek the ultimate punishment.
UPDATE NO. 2, NOV. 15, 11:01 A.M.: Ceaser Ramirez-Rafael, 24, has been identified as the worker who was fatally stabbed at Volcano Tea House in Garden Grove Friday, according to Garden Grove Police Lt. Ben Stauffer. The department spokesman did not yet know the relationship between the deceased and his suspected killer, Robert Gabriel Rodgers.
UPDATE NO. 1, NOV. 14, 5:08 P.M.: The man who police say fatally stabbed a worker at Volcano Tea House in Garden Grove has been identified as 20-year-old Robert Gabriel Rodgers, whose last known address was in Anaheim. Arrested on suspicion of murder, Rodgers was booked into Orange County Jail, according to Garden Grove Police Lt. Ben Stauffer. The department's spokesman says the victim has not positively been identified and that investigators do not know what went on inside the business to cause him to wind up stabbed to death on the floor near the freezer.
ORIGINAL POST, NOV. 14, 2:53 P.M.: A man who cleans up the Volcano Tea House on Garden Grove Boulevard was found stabbed to death today and a second man who was locked inside the Garden Grove business along with the deceased has been arrested for suspected murder, according to police.
The owner of the tea house at 10130 Garden Grove Boulevard approached her shop this morning to find a “suspicious” man motioning for her to come inside, sensed something was wrong, locked the door and moved a safe distance away to call 9-1-1, according to the Garden Grove Police Department.
Officers arrived around 11 a.m. to find one man alive and another dead inside near the freezer from apparent stab wounds, according to Lt. Ben Stauffer, the Garden Grove Police spokesman, who was unsure if a weapon had been recovered. The accused killer was detained and driven a short distance away to the police station for questioning. The motive for the attack is unclear at this time.
Release of the identity of the dead man is pending notification of next of kin, Stauffer said.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.