Two men who participated in an alcohol-related confrontation in Pacific Beach that ended with a friend’s death were ordered Dec. 11 to perform 15 days of public work service under terms of three years probation with one day in jail that they have already served.
San Diego Superior Court Judge David Danielsen said he was disturbed about all the “carnage in Pacific Beach” that occurs when “a lot of young men with testosterone” drink too much alcohol and fight. The judge said he often sees too many cases in which someone is killed or seriously injured as a result of someone drinking too much.
The case against Matthew Lexin, 24, of Carlsbad, and Edward Vitela, 23, of Encinitas, doesn’t involve drunk driving, but it ended in the death of their friend, Timothy Easton, 22, of Encinitas, on March 17.
The men were attending a St. Patrick’s Day party when a drunken Easton got into a confrontation with teenagers at a Pacific Beach gas station.
Easton was injured, returned to the party and persuaded Vitela and Lexin to go after his assailants, who left the area. Instead, the three of them mistakenly thought a young couple in a car were the ones who injured Easton, and they kicked and screamed at the occupants in the car in the 800 block of Agate Street.
A young man and his girlfriend were in the area looking for apartments for rent and driving slow. The driver briefly stopped because of the men’s motions and found the car surrounded by the men kicking and attacking the car. The driver drove away, hitting Easton, who later died at a hospital.
The driver called 911 and told police he thought the men were trying to carjack him. Police cleared the driver of any criminal responsibility. Lexin and Vitela pleaded guilty to conspiracy to assault the couple in the car.
At the request of the defense attorneys, Danielsen reduced the felony conviction to a misdemeanor, though Deputy District Attorney Amy Maund was opposed to that.
The men were ordered to abstain from alcohol for the next three years and stay away from bars. They will be subject to random alcohol tests. Danielsen ordered them to pay a $639 fine each, and they must pay $1,127 in probation supervision costs. No further jail time was ordered, although they could have faced four years in prison.
The mother of the victim, Mary Piazza Easton, wrote the judge a letter and urged “their sentencing be as lenient as possible” and agreed the felony conviction be reduced to a misdemeanor. She wrote the men “will carry the shadow of this life-altering nightmare for as long as they live.”
“Everyone owns a share of responsibility for this tragedy, my son, and certainly the driver included. Life must, and will, go on for these boys,” wrote Mary Easton.
“She’s frankly asking for closure,” said attorney Tom Warwick, who represents Vitela, of the letter.
“This was a terrible tragedy. He’s done everything in his power to atone for his conduct,” said Warwick.
Attorney Richard Muir, who represents Lexin, said it was “extremely rare” for the probation department to recommend probation instead of prison in a case that ended with a fatality.