MS-13 member: Granillo wasn't running away from fight

The first gang member testified yesterday in the trial of Ashley Benton, the 17-year-old girl accused of stabbing 15-year-old Gabriel Granillo to death last summer during a gang fight at Chew Park — and he told jurors that Granillo wasn't trying to run away from the fight, as prosecutors had said during opening arguments Monday.

The witness — a 20-year-old members of Southwest Locos Salvatrucha, a Houston subset of the MS-13 gang, who calls himself Cucaracha — told defense attorney Kent Schaffer that he saw Benton stab Granillo out of the corner of his eye during the fight. "She came around him like this," he said, showing Schaffer how he saw Benton reach past the baseball bat Granillo was holding to stab Granillo in the heart. "He wasn't running away." As for how the fight started, Cucaracha testified that the MS-13 members and members of Crazy Crew, a rival gang with whom Benton associated, clashed while waiting for friends to get out of summer school at Lamar High. He said Crazy Crew members threw gang signs as they drove past a CVS where MS-13 members were parked; the MS-13 members gave chase and both groups ended up at Chew Park at Dunlavy and the Southwest Freeway. There, Cucaracha said, 15 members of Crazy Crew walked across the park and threw baseball bats at three MS-13 members. "That's where we got the bats," he said. (As the Chronicle notes, Cucaracha testified about the stabbing while holding a baseball bat, which apparently made bailiffs and Schaffer a little nervous. "Don't hit me," Schaffer told Cucaracha at one point in the testimony.)

Schaffer did try to poke holes in Cucaracha's testimony, reminding the gang member that he initially told police he didn't see who stabbed Granillo. In response, Cucaracha said he had repeatedly lied to police because he "didn't want to get into trouble." On Wednesday, Cucaracha described the scene after Granillo was stabbed, saying fellow gang members tried to walk him back to his car, but that he fell in the grass and died. "I knew he was dead," Cucaracha said. "I think he choked to death on his own blood."

Wednesday's testimony from Cucaracha came after lawyers bickered Tuesday about whether MS-13 members would attack girls. Mia Magness, an assistant Harris County DA, told state District Judge Devon Anderson that the MS-13 clique Granillo belonged to had rules against hurting woman, but Rick DeToto, Benton's attorney, said that was ridiculous. "What she's saying is these thugs sit down and they write down the rules," DeToto said. "Thou shall not do this, thou shall not do that, you cannot do this. ... The bottom line is if you think that MS-13 will not harm a woman, you're crazy."