By Khalida Sarwari
A Santa Clara County Superior Court judge today ordered a man to stand trial in connection with the savage rape and murder of 46-year-old Sany San in San Jose in July 2007.
Julio Jovel, 32, is charged with murder, sodomy and rape, Santa Clara County District Attorney spokeswoman Amy Cornell said. He has pleaded not guilty.
At the conclusion of the defendant’s two-day preliminary hearing in Santa Clara County Superior Court in San Jose, Judge Griffin M.J. Bonini set a Sept. 21 arraignment date.
Prosecutors allege that Jovel and fellow transient Luis Lorenzo robbed, sexually assaulted and stabbed San to death near Story Road and Knox Avenue in the shadow of the Interstate Highway 280 and U.S. Highway 101 interchange on the morning of July 22, 2007.
At the beginning of the preliminary hearing Tuesday, Deputy District Attorney James Gibbons-Shapiro called Israel Guerrero Carmona to the stand to testify about what he had witnessed that morning and his relationship with Jovel and Lorenzo, who committed suicide in jail, according to Cornell.
Carmona, a transient, said that he had lived in a homeless encampment along with Jovel, Lorenzo, and another man named Juan Mesa not far from where the murder had occurred. Early that Sunday morning, Carmona said he awoke to Jovel approaching him with bloody hands and admitting that he had “killed a lady.”
Carmona said he and Mesa then walked over toward an area near Tully and King roads and saw Lorenzo having sex with a woman whose chest was bloodied and who appeared lifeless.
San, found by police with multiple stab wounds, was killed in what police described at the time as one of the most vicious attacks the department had seen.
Jovel was arrested at the scene of the crime after he reportedly called 911 on San’s phone to report the incident, according to police documents. Lorenzo was picked up two days later at a nearby house on Florida Avenue.
If convicted as charged, Jovel faces a maximum sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole, Cornell said.