Attorneys for three young men still in jail and charged with the murder of La Jolla surfer Emery Kauanui will argue for a lower bail figure today, June 7. The parents of a fourth suspect didn’t want to wait, and already posted a $1 million bond. Their son reportedly checked into a rehabilitation center on June 1.
Matthew Yanke, 20, had the lowest bail figure of the four charged at the May 31 arraignment by San Diego Superior Court Judge Jeff Fraser.
Besides Yanke, Seth Cravens, 21, Orlando Osuna, 22, and Eric Matthew House, 20, all pleaded not guilty.
Kauanui was attacked May 25 outside his mother’s home in La Jolla following an incident earlier that evening at the La Jolla Brew House. He died four days later in a hospital.
The funeral of Kauanui, 24, will take place on Saturday, June 9. His ashes will be scattered later that day at Windansea Beach.
The parents of Yanke had to pay a $100,000 premium to a bail bondsman to get their son released on $1 million bond. But they may have had a reason to post it so quickly after his attorney, Kerry Steigerwalt, said his client was diagnosed with depression by a psychiatrist in jail.
“He is so heartbroken ” how else do you describe it? He’s so torn up about this,” Steigerwalt said. “He’s thinking more about the loss of his friend, his death, than the monstrous amount of time that he’s looking at in prison, potentially.”
Attorneys for all four men had urged the judge to set bail at approximately $250,000, which is an average amount of bail for a murder with no other charges. Fraser set the highest bail, $2.5 million, for Cravens, after Deputy District Attorney Genaro Ramirez said Cravens inflicted the fatal blow.
“Neighbors from across the street saw four, not three, not two, striking the individual when he was vulnerable,” Ramirez said. “This was actually a venture by these four to show that if you harm one of us, you harm all of us.”
Bail for House was set at $2 million, and Osuna’s bail amount is $1.5 million.
The prosecutor said the four men were known informally as the “Bird Rock Bandits.” Ramirez said Cravens’ physical strength was known by the other three.
“They knew about his violent tendencies, his ability to put down people with one blow, to really inflict great bodily injury, and they went along together,” Ramirez said to the judge.
“He (Cravens) joined the fray, and we have verifiable information that he has in the past inflicted substantial injury on other individuals in a group setting,” the prosecutor said.
Cravens is heavier than any of the other defendants. He is 6 feet tall and weighs 220 pounds, according to court records. He is also the only one being housed separately, in the South Bay Detention Facility, away from the two others, who are in the downtown central jail.
Cravens’ attorney, Terry Allen, said the prosecutor was overstating his client’s strength.
“They’re making Seth out to be a lethal weapon walking around,” Allen said. “He’s a football player. He’s a big kid. He’s not the person who would go out of his way to harm anybody else. We don’t understand these allegations.”
“I think a blow was struck where Emery was hit, and he fell back on cement and that contributed significantly to his death,” Steigerwalt said. “This is a result of a fight among boys, just out of high school. It’s a tragedy all the way around.”
“This was a horrible accident. Everybody is close to one another, and it was out of character,” said Osuna’s attorney, Jan Ronis, who described his client’s role as being “merely an observer of the fight that occurred.”
House’s attorney said he was a friend of the victim and his family. The victim and the defendants have known each other since high school.
The prosecutor scoffed at the defense attorney’s claims that their clients were friends of the victim.
“You don’t leave somebody bleeding to death with a cracked skull if you’re a friend,” Ramirez said.