Man Stabs Another Being Held by Officer : Fatal Attack Occurs at Motel; Assailant Claims Victim Robbed Him

A Santa Ana man being restrained by a police officer was stabbed to death by another man, police said Thursday.

Maureen Thomas, a Santa Ana Police Department spokeswoman, said Alfredo Esparza Mercado, 24, was stabbed once in the heart late Wednesday by Steven Noah Chavez, 23, a Santa Ana truck loader, in a hallway of the Ha’Penny Inn at 901 S. Harbor Blvd. Chavez was later booked into the Orange County Jail on suspicion of murder.

Robin Robertson, 29, a motel resident who witnessed the stabbing, gave the following account:

Robertson and his girlfriend, Martha Belk, went to the motel office to pay their rent. Walking down the hall to their room, the couple saw a man outside wrap a sweater around his arm, punch through the window of their room and climb in. Belk ran back to the motel office and had the night clerk, Kathy Nelson, phone police.

Robertson watched his room and saw the intruder, later identified as Chavez, walking out the door with a knife in his hand.

“I stepped back a little,” Robertson said, “and said it was my room. He said he was looking for someone who ripped him off. He offered to pay for the (broken window) glass.”

Robertson noticed that Chavez was bleeding heavily and ordered him back into the room, telling him to sit at a table. Robertson removed the sweater Chavez still had around his bleeding left arm and replaced it with a makeshift tourniquet and sling made from a towel.

Calm, Apologetic

According to Robertson, Chavez was calm and apologetic. “He realized he made a mistake,” Robertson said.

Two Santa Ana police officers arrived and began to question Chavez. But Robertson, who accompanied the officers to the room, did not tell them that he had seen Chavez carrying a knife, which Chavez had put in his pocket.

The fact that Chavez had a knife “slipped my mind,” Robertson said later.

For a time, Robertson said, both officers questioned Chavez, who repeated his story that he was after a man who robbed him. Then one of the officers left the room.

While Chavez was being questioned by the remaining officer, who identified himself to Robertson as Mike Hamann, a man left the room next door and walked past several times, asking what happened.

Chavez told the officer that the man pacing the hall, Mercado, was the man who robbed him. The officer went into the hallway, detained Mercado and began to frisk him.

The officer then held Mercado’s arms behind him to place him in handcuffs. Robertson said he then saw Chavez get up and walk toward Mercado with the knife in his hand.

“I yelled, ‘He’s got a knife,’ ” Robertson said, “but (the officer) must have thought I meant the guy he was holding, because he just held him tighter.”

Chavez lunged at Mercado, stabbing him once in the heart. The officer released Mercado, who ran about 150 feet into a nearby recreational vehicle lot, collapsed, and died.

After a struggle, the officer disarmed Chavez and took him into custody. Police are investigating the possibility that the killing was drug-related. The police report on the incident essentially corroborated Robertson’s story.

Sgt. Bob Ensley of the Police Department’s community affairs division said a decision by an officer on whether to search an individual under suspicion “depends on the circumstances.”

The police spokesman said Chavez was not free to leave while being questioned by the officer, although he said the man was not at that time under arrest or in custody.

When to search someone for a concealed weapon, Ensley said, was “impossible to put to a precise point.” Among those factors to be considered, he said, were “if the man’s actions are such that you feel uncomfortable.”