People v. Rodriguez CA1/4

I. FACTS

On May 18, 2013, at about 3:00 a.m., defendant and five of his friends entered a Denny’s restaurant in San Mateo. They were seated to the right of the register next to a table of four people who were also dining. The people at both tables appeared intoxicated. At one point, defendant got up to leave the restaurant, and Vicky Williams, the restaurant manager, heard him say “I’m leaving. I’m not going to get into it over a female.” After defendant left, Williams went to her office to get change. Her office has a monitor of the closed circuit surveillance camera of the restaurant’s register area. Williams looked at the monitor and saw that defendant reentered the restaurant and

1 walked straight to Deepak Kumar. Kumar was one of the men who had been seated at the table next to the one where defendant had been seated. Williams ran from her office into the restaurant area and saw defendant hit Kumar. Kumar put his hands up in front of his face to try to stop the punch. At that point, the people at defendant’s and Kumar’s tables got up and proceeded to get defendant and Kumar to exit from the restaurant into the parking lot. In the parking lot, Williams observed that the…