Man guilty of murder in 2017 stabbing
‘Monstrous’ attack on man outside of taqueria waiting for his food
On the evening of Sept. 8, 2017, Rodolfo Lopez was sitting outside a taqueria waiting for his food when suddenly a knife-wielding man came from behind and repeatedly stabbed him in the chest. Lopez then staggered toward his terrified wife waiting nearby before he collapsed and took his final breath.
Nearly two years later, a jury has convicted Alan Christopher Gaeta, 42, of firstdegree murder with a special circumstance of lying in wait for Lopez’s killing, and of the attempted murder of a fruit vendor who became a key witness in the trial. Gaeta faces a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole for the murder, and seven years to life in prison for the attempted murder count.
Esmeralda Garcia vividly remembers sitting in her car near Senter and Coyote roads waiting for the 31-year-old Lopez to return with tacos for their dinner. Then she saw her husband approaching, bloodied and with panic in his voice, before he died from several stab wounds, including ones to his heart and lung.
After last week’s verdict, Garcia said she was “overwhelmed with happiness.”
“I see it as justice in this lifetime,” Garcia said in an interview Monday. “I feel that everybody worked very, very hard to gather all of the evidence to prove he was guilty.”
Gaeta’s attorney, Deputy Public Defender Malorie Street, declined to comment on the verdict.
Both Garcia and Deputy District Attorney David Pandori, who called the attack “monstrous,” also recognized the contribution of Ramos Reyes Reyes, a fruit vendor whose quick thinking led to Gaeta’s arrest a few hours after Lopez was stabbed.
Reyes Reyes testified that a few minutes before the stabbing, Gaeta slashed at him at his fruit stand at Hellyer Avenue and Palisade Drive, near Hellyer County Park. Police initially reported that the fruit-stand attack occurred after Lopez was stabbed.
But Reyes Reyes managed to take a photo of the Gaeta’s car and license plate — including a distinct red flame sticker in the rear window — before Gaeta drove about a mile west to the taqueria where Lopez and Garcia were.
As Lopez sat outside waiting for his food, authorities, backed
by security video, contend that Gaeta approached Lopez, grabbed him with his left hand and stabbed him with a steak knife he had in his right hand.
San Jose police officers scouring the area soon talked to Reyes Reyes, whose photos gave them the leads they needed to identify Gaeta’s black 2000 Nissan Maxima. In the early morning hours of Sept. 9, a Santa Clara County Sheriff’s deputy spotted the car traveling near the San Jose-Cupertino border at Bollinger Road, and stopped it. Gaeta was arrested, wearing the same clothes of the attacker captured on video, and with the steak knife visible on the floorboard of the car.
Reyes Reyes, who had since relocated to outside of Puebla, Mexico, traveled more than 2,000 miles to return to Santa Clara County to testify in the trial, with permission from the U.S. government, Pandori said.
“Here’s a guy who wasn’t even a citizen, and had a greater sense of civic duty than a lot of witnesses in my career,” Pandori said. “And without Ramos, police would have been in a real difficult situation. As far as I’m concerned, he’s a hero.”
A clear motive was never established at trial, and Gaeta had no known connection to Lopez. At the time of the killing, homeless advocates familiar with Gaeta described him as someone working hard to emerge from a troubled life that once led to him being shot in the legs in a gang-related attack. They lauded the father of three for his religious devotion and efforts to change his life, and were pained to see him with violent charges against him.
Lopez’s death was another heartbreaking tragedy for Garcia, who leaned on friends and her faith to see her. A decade earlier, she lost a daughter to cancer. And when the stabbing occurred, she was just a year out from donating her kidney to save the life of a friend diagnosed with renal failure.
After the verdict was read, Garcia said jurors stopped to speak with her, and hugged her, expressing their sympathy. She said she initially had doubts about whether the jury would find Gaeta guilty, but now is relieved that she was able to see some justice for her late husband.
“I am at peace,” she said.