Jose Solano Landaeta is accused of beheading his ex-girlfriend with a samurai sword as horrified neighbors watched. His attorney says he acted in self-defense and is a paranoid schizophrenic who was off his medication.
Opening arguments began this week in the trial of a California man accused of beheading his ex-girlfriend with a samurai sword outside her apartment in broad daylight as neighbors screamed.
Karina Castro, 27, was decapitated in September 2020 in the middle of her street as horrified residents watched and shouted for her attacker to stop, authorities said.
José Rafael Solano Landaeta, 34, is charged with first-degree murder in the slaying of his ex-girlfriend, who was the mother of his 1-year-old child.
Landaeta refused to leave his jail cell and was not present when the trial began Tuesday, according to local reports.
His attorney, Robert Cummings, told jurors his client killed Castro in self-defense, alleging she had a knife and had tried to stab him and had threatened his family. Landaeta also is a paranoic schizophrenic who had stopped taking his medication, Cummings said.
Prosecutor Josh Stauffer said in court that Landaeta's motive was pure vengeance, and that Castro had obtained a restraining order against Landaeta before she was killed.
The defense attorney said in his opening arguments, “This is not a whodunit — this is a ‘why?’” Cummings told the court. “And the ‘why?’ is not vengeance.”
The man and woman had been in a "heated argument" the day she was killed and she had accused him of being a rapist and pedophile, the prosecutor said.
Landaeta had sent an Instagram message hours before the attack that said “She lookin ta get smoked blood. She needa get 86ed. Ima have ta do what I gotta do broo," Stauffer said, displaying the post to the jury, according to local reports.
"We can't sleep. We don't eat. We're living in a nightmare," Martin Castro, the woman's father, told a local station outside court Tuesday. "I've watched movies that aren't as bad as what I'm going through and what we're going through."
The prosecutors said three witnesses saw the pair arguing in front of Castro's apartment, and walked into the road to avoid them. Then the horrified bystanders saw the man go to his car and get a samurai sword, the prosecutor told the court.
One of those women, Renata Tabellion, wept Tuesday as she described what she saw. “At the moment, it looked like a prop,” she said. “As soon as he got close to her, he hit her once, he hit her twice. We were all screaming ‘Stop! Stop!’ I thought we were next,” she said.
According to prosecutors, Landaeta kept striking Castro as she was curled in the fetal position on the street, even after her head was severed from her body. Castro's arms were nearly dismembered in the attack, according to the prosecution.
Jurors were shown photographs of the woman's headless body. One male panelist put a shaking hand over his mouth as tears rolled down his face while looking at the image, according to local reports.
The photos were not shown in open court and were quickly gathered after jurors viewed them so that people in the gallery could not see them, The Mercury News of San Jose reported.
After the grisly killing, Landaeta drove away, prosecutors said. He later returned to the bloody scene with his mother, San Mateo County Sheriff's Deputy Damian Machuca testified.
“He said, ‘She was trying to kill me, I’m sorry,'” as he was handcuffed, the deputy said.
Testimony continued Wednesday. The trial is expected to last from two to three weeks.
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