Trial is scheduled to begin today for a homeless man accused of murdering another homeless man by conking him on the head with a piece of wood.
Sergio Camacho Gonzalez, 39, is charged with felony murder with a sentencing enhancement for the personal
use of a deadly weapon that could fetch him up to 26
years to life in state prison with a conviction.
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Fullerton Police officers were called
Sept. 27, 2010, about a man down in an alley in an industrial area
between Brookhurst Road and Gilbert Street, in the 1800 block of West
Commonwealth Avenue. Portland, Oregon, native Andrew Petrusiak, 56, who was also known as Andrew Pieatrucat, was
already dead, having taken blows from a blunt object to the head.
Andrew Pieatrucat, 2010 OC Homicide No. 45: Conked in Head in Alley
An Orange County District Attorney's office trial statement claims the homeless men had gotten into a verbal argument behind a Fullerton liquor store earlier in the evening before Petrusiak returned to his campsite
behind a nearby business complex.
Gonzalez is accused of showing up about a half hour later with the lumber he used to strike Petrusiak in the back of the head. Prosecutor Stephen McGreevy will likely show video surveillance evidence of Gonzalez entering the campsite and leaving four minutes later.
Gonzalez was suspected early on, but police had a hard time
finding him because he had no known address and was trying to not be
found, according to authorities who at the time credited an anonymous tip with
leading investigators to an area near Lincoln Boulevard in
Anaheim, which is
where Gonzalez was arrested on March 23, 2011.
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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.