Trial began Wednesday for a 51-year-old Long Beach man charged with a killing during an apparent robbery-gone-wrong in Santa Ana of a marijuana dispensary worker who was carrying tens of thousands of dollars in cash.

Antonio Lamont Triplett is facing murder and robbery charges related to the slaying of 29-year-old Osvaldo Garcia, who in the early-morning hours of Sept. 16, 2019 was run off a roadway, shot multiple times and beaten at the Santa Ana College campus.

During openings statements Wednesday morning in Orange County Superior Court, Deputy District Attorney Mark Birney told a Santa Ana jury that Triplett was one of at least three men involved in the fatal attack. Deputy Public Defender Lawrence Volk, who is representing Triplett, countered by telling jurors that there is no evidence Triplett was involved in planning the robbery or beating or killing Garcia.

Garcia, a Santa Ana resident, worked for a marijuana dispensary in South Los Angeles, and was responsible for transporting cash receipts from the business. He left the dispensary shortly after 11 p.m. on Sept. 15, 2019 with a backpack filled with cash, making plans to meet his girlfriend at an In-N-Out in Santa Ana, the prosecutor said.

Security video from the community college showed another vehicle forcing Garcia’s car off the roadway near Bristol and 17th streets intersection and onto a raised embankment and hedges. The video showed two people get out of the other car and run up to Garcia’s vehicle.

Birney told jurors that at least one of the two men fired a half-dozen gunshots at Garcia as he tried to escape from his car. Garcia was on the phone with his girlfriend, telling her “They are shooting at me, help me!”, the prosecutor added.

Garcia managed to crawl out the passenger side window of his car, the prosecutor said, before the men caught up to him, two more gunshots were fired and Garcia was beaten. He ultimately was shot five times, the prosecutor told jurors.

A Santa Ana police officer in a marked patrol car drove by on Bristol Street but apparently didn’t see the crashed car or injured Garcia. A man the prosecutor identified as Triplett immediately ran off holding the backpack with the cash from the dispensary, escaping through the campus and a nearby shopping center.

The vehicle that ran Garcia off the road remained at the scene for several more minutes, security footage showed, finally leaving less than 30 seconds before Santa Ana officers responding to reports of a traffic collision arrived.

“The brazen nature of it is simply amazing,” Birney said.

Having listened to the attack on an open phone line and believing Garcia had been kidnapped, Garcia’s girlfriend went to the campus where she was met by officers who brought her to the nearby Santa Ana police station. The officers realized that Garcia’s girlfriend had not ended the phone call with her boyfriend, and Garcia’s cell phone had been stolen by one of the suspects.

Officers, with the assistance of a police helicopter, tracked the stolen cell phone first to Corona and then along several Los Angeles-area freeways to a parking lot in Carson, where they spotted occupants of three vehicles moving items from one car to another, the prosecutor said. Two vehicles were stopped by police as they left the area, while a third was later tracked through the same stolen cell phone to Long Beach.

The suspected driver of that third vehicle was taken into custody in Long Beach as he got into a fourth car, and the cell phone was recovered, Birney said. Among those taken into custody were Triplett, John Taylor and Ryan Jones, as well as a woman who worked in the same dispensary as Garcia, the prosecutor said.

Blood found on Triplett’s shoe after his arrest was tied to Garcia, the prosecutor said. Cell phone data showed Jones near the dispensary earlier in the night and Jones, Triplett and Taylor in Santa Ana at the time of the robbery and killing.

The prosecutor told jurors that is isn’t clear from ballistic evidence whether one or two weapons were used during the robbery, and didn’t not directly say whether Triplett himself is suspected to have fired a gun.

In his opening statements, Volk  told jurors that there is “zero evidence” that Triplett was involved in planning the robbery or knew that anyone was armed.

The defense attorney alleged that Jones was the driver of the vehicle that forced Garcia off the road and that Taylor was the one who beat and shot Garcia.

If convicted, Triplett faces a potential life sentence.

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