SANTA ANA, Calif.—With his girlfriend and their 4-year-old son watching, a 42-year-old man jumped out of his pickup truck and opened fire on a group of friends and cousins in a road-rage dispute in Costa Mesa on Thanksgiving Day, a prosecutor told jurors April 20.
Lee Queuon Walker is charged with one count of murder and five counts of attempted murder with sentencing enhancements for the discharge of a gun causing death and inflicting great bodily injury on the victims.
Walker is accused of fatally shooting 30-year-old Lucas Rivera-Velasco of Costa Mesa on Nov. 24 at 423 W. Bay St. Also wounded in the shooting were Salvador Pulido-Nieto, Bernardo Millan-Pulido, Hugo Medina-Rivera, and Gilberto Mediina-Rivera, while Jaime Nieto-Millan escaped injury.
Walker’s defense attorney, Randall Bethune of the Orange County Public Defender’s Office, declined to make an opening statement in the trial Thursday.
Senior Deputy District Attorney Dan Feldman said the cousins and friends had watched Mexico’s soccer team compete in the World Cup and went to lunch at 1:30 p.m. at Costa Brava restaurant in Costa Mesa.
The victims work as gardeners and landscapers and were enjoying their rare day off, Feldman said.
“That day ended in gunfire,” Feldman said. “That day ended in a bloody, horrific, deadly weapon because of Lee Walker.”
On Day of the Shooting
Walker and his girlfriend were looking for a McDonald’s restaurant that was open on the holiday because their son wanted chicken nuggets, Feldman said. After their third failed try, they crossed paths with Rivera-Velasco and the others, the prosecutor said.The group of cousins and friends were dropping off Nieto-Millan after leaving the Mexican restaurant at 6:30 p.m., Feldman said. The 2003 Chevrolet Silverado they were in clipped Walker’s 2021 Chevrolet Silverado and the side-view mirror snapped out of place before popping back into place “as designed,” Feldman said.
While the group was enjoying music and “laughing and joking,” a “frustrated” Walker, who still hadn’t found an open McDonald’s, saw his side-view mirror had gotten clipped and thought it was damaged, Feldman said. Walker cursed, grabbed a 9mm gun from the center console, and pursued the other pickup truck, he added.
Medina-Rivera, who was behind the wheel, kept driving, but as he pulled into a left turn lane on 19th Street to go north on Harbor Boulevard and was idling at the red light, Walker jumped out of his pickup truck and ran over to them and “pounded on the window,” Feldman said. The men in the older pickup truck did not speak English and couldn’t understand what the defendant was saying, so they just kept going, Feldman said.
Walker’s girlfriend, Denise Segura, implored the defendant to stop following the men, Feldman said.
“The whole time she was begging him to stop,” Feldman said. “She even took a picture of the Silverado to get the license plate and report them.”
Segura also told police that at no time did they feel threatened by the men, Feldman said.
The prosecutor showed surveillance video and audio from car dealerships of Walker shooting the victims as they stopped at 423 W. Bay St.
“He fired eight times at six young men,” Feldman said. “Minor property damage turned into a death sentence.”
Segura pleaded with Walker to let her out of the vehicle, but he kept going back to her parents’ home in Santa Ana, Feldman said. When they arrived, Segura was “hysterical,” and Walker told his father-in-law, “I [expletive] up. I shot someone,” Feldman alleged.
Jesus Segura ordered the defendant out of the house, and Walker eventually called 911 about 3 a.m. the next day and made arrangements to turn himself in, Feldman said.
Rivera-Velasco had consumed enough alcohol to be three times the legal limit for driving, Feldman said.
