Three La Jolla men who were part of a loose-knit group called the Bird Rock Bandits plead guilty on Dec. 22 to violating the terms of their probation by hanging out together and smoking pot. Orlando Sandoval Osuna, 24, Eric Matthew House, 22 and Matthew Yanke, 23, were arraigned before San Diego Superior Court Judge John Einhorn, the same judge who granted them probation. The men are being held in jail without bail until their sentencing on Jan. 22. The judge has not yet determined whether to send the men to jail or reinstate their probation. The defendants pleaded guilty in 2008 to involuntary manslaughter in the death of professional La Jolla surfer Emery Kauanui Jr. Yanke and Osuna had also plead guilty to assaulting people at a New Year\u2019s Eve party in 2006. The defendants all graduated from La Jolla High School. San Diego police were tipped off by an unnamed source to the defendant\u2019s violations of their probation. The County Probation Department is in the process of writing a report of recommendation for the court to determine whether to allow the defendants to continue their probation \u2014 and possibly start it over \u2014 or be sent to prison. Chief probation officerMark Jenkins said it\u2019s not uncommon for criminals to violate their probation requirements.\u00a0 “What really is the issue is how seriously does the individual take the probation status that the court has provided to them?” Jenkins said. “That\u2019s something that we\u2019re always looking at. When you\u2019re looking at going to prison when you haven\u2019t necessarily been there before and don\u2019t necessarily have a criminal history, I\u2019m surprised when someone doesn\u2019t take that grant of probation seriously. People learn lessons differently and sometimes it takes more severe sanctions to learn a lesson.” The series of events that eventually led to the murder of Kauanui started on the night of May 24, 2007 when Kauanui apparently fought with House and poured beer on his head earlier at the La Jolla Brew House on Fay Avenue. Kauanui was driven home and the three defendants, along with Henri Hendricks and Seth Cravens, later appeared at his mother\u2019s house on Mount Soledad to fight Kauanui. Cravens dealt the fatal blow that knocked Kauanui to the ground and caused his skull to split in three places. Cravens is now serving 15 years to life in prison. The defendants wrote in their plea bargains: “I aided and abetted Seth Cravens in an assault on Emery Kauanui which resulted in Mr. Kauanui\u2019s death by agreeing with (names of co-defendants) to go to Mr. Kauanui\u2019s house for the purpose of assaulting Mr. Kauanui with knowledge of Seth Cravens\u2019 reputation for violence.” Judge Einhorn had\u00a0dismissed the allegation the men were involved in a gang, despite the fact the men called themselves the Bird Rock Bandits for crashing parties and assaulting people. \u00a0\u2014 Neal Putnam contributed to this story.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Three La Jolla men who were part of a loose-knit group called the Bird Rock Bandits plead guilty on Dec. 22 to violating the terms of their probation by hanging out together and smoking pot. Orlando Sandoval Osuna, 24, Eric Matthew House, 22 and Matthew Yanke, 23, were arraigned before San Diego Superior Court Judge […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11560","_seopress_titles_title":"Bird Rock Bandits in slammer for holidays","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11560,11551,11593,11550],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-296856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-la-jolla-village-news","category-news","category-no-images","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296856\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}