Guilty Plea in Slaying of Hermosa Merchant

A Colorado man who told police that he came to California to “make it big” in modeling has pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in the stabbing death of a Hermosa Beach florist.

John Ortega, 21, of Colorado Springs entered the plea Tuesday in South Bay Municipal Court. He faces up to 12 years in prison when he is sentenced Feb. 1.

Prosecutors, who had charged Ortega with murder, said they accepted the guilty plea to the lesser charge because Ortega claimed that he stabbed Steven Gallardo after the florist made a sexual advance.

State law says voluntary manslaughter is the “unlawful killing of a human being without malice . . . upon a sudden quarrel or heat of passion.” Deputy Dist. Atty. Sandra Buttitta said Ortega could have argued that he was defending himself from Gallardo’s advances.

‘Only One There’

“Unfortunately, there is no victim or witness to tell us otherwise,” Buttitta said. “You want to send him to prison for the rest of his life, but . . . the defendant was the only one who was there.”

Buttitta said Gallardo’s brother, Gustavo, understood the prosecutor’s decision. Gustavo Gallardo could not be reached for comment this week. In a previous interview, he said he did not believe that his brother was a homosexual.

Deputy Public Defender Ken Star said the facts of the case would not have justified a murder conviction. Ortega “strikes me as nice, personable guy who got in a situation where he lost control,” Star said. “I think he feels terrible, as best I can tell.”

Investigators who arrested Ortega shortly after the Oct. 18 killing said he admitted being at Gallardo’s apartment on nearby Pier Avenue. They said Ortega told them that he had met Gallardo near the beach, gone home with him after they smoked marijuana and fought with him when the 41-year-old bachelor began to stroke Ortega’s thigh.

Ortega said he blacked out but acknowledged that he must have been the person who stabbed Gallardo 13 times, investigators said.

Police said Ortega stole the florist’s Mercedes-Benz convertible, and Gallardo’s relatives said the car was probably the motive for the killing. (Ortega once spent two years in a Colorado prison for auto theft.)

Investigators said they later found a bloody knife and Ortega’s pants, stained with blood, bunched up in the trunk of another stolen car that Ortega had driven from Colorado.

The director of a modeling school in Colorado Springs said Ortega had taken classes there and was a serious student. Ortega told detectives that he drove to California in hopes of breaking into the modeling business.

Arriving in Hermosa Beach, Ortega hung out on the streets and slept in the stolen car near the park-like railroad right of way that runs the length of the city, police said.

Gallardo had been a popular merchant from the time he arrived in Hermosa Beach in early 1987. The owner of the Hermosa Florist shop, he gave discounts and free floral arrangements to friends in the Pier Avenue shopping district. The shop specialized in exotic protea flowers that Gallardo grew at his 10-acre ranch in San Diego County.