Theatergoer convicted of stabbing two during horror movie

After an appeals court threw out his first conviction, a 30-year-old Anaheim man was found guilty at his retrial Wednesday on charges that he stabbed two strangers during the showing of a horror movie in Fullerton.

On the evening of Feb. 24, 2008, Steven Walter Robinson Jr. bought a ticket to “The Signal” at an AMC Theatre in Fullerton, where he appeared agitated and carried a container of alcohol that a security guard insisted he put in his car, according to the Orange County district attorney’s office.

Minutes later, Robinson asked a cashier if anyone had seen a “baggie” he had apparently mislaid, and shortly afterward someone turned in a bag of hallucinogenic mushrooms at the box office, the DA’s office said.

After Robinson was kicked out of the theater for refusing to show a cup of suspected alcohol to security, he sneaked back inside with a folded pocket knife and stabbed two fellow moviegoers, prosecutors said.

The victims were identified as Julio Sanchez, 38, who suffered wounds to the head, arm, chest and knee, and Eloy Uresti, 65, who was stabbed in the arm, according to prosecutors.

Investigators found that Robinson had a fascination with serial killers and used the online screen name “psychokiller666.”

In 2009, a jury convicted Robinson on charges of attempted murder in connection with the attack, and a judge sentenced him to 22 years to life in state prison, but in 2011 an appeals court threw out the conviction based on what the district attorney’s office described as a judge’s error in instructing the jury.

On Wednesday, jurors convicted Robinson of two counts of attempted murder, which could again bring him 22 years to life in prison when he is sentenced in November.