Miguel Alvarez, now 23, didn't know that the teenager was tied to a city street gang calling itself Dominicans Don't Play, said a defense attorney in an opening statement to jurors Thursday in Alvarez's murder trial."It was the slap heard around Perth Amboy," the attorney, John Perrone of Woodbridge, said.
Alvarez was hounded by the machete-wielding gang members after that, Perrone said.The dispute ended with Alvarez stabbing a man who went by the gang name "Machete" during a brawl in August 2007, Perrone said.Alvarez, afraid for his life, was due to leave for Florida the next day, but the fight changed that, Perrone said.
"It was fear of a gang, a gang that runs rampant in Perth Amboy," Perrone said. "We have every right to use self-defense. On Aug. 26, 2007, Miguel Alvarez used that right. He used that knife because he was being attacked, because his friends were being attacked. That was an attack, that was a wilding, that was a riot."
"Machete," Tony Martinez, 19, was stabbed around 2:30 a.m. that Sunday just outside Kennedy Fried Chicken on Smith Street across from the Perth Amboy train station.Martinez was pronounced dead at Raritan Bay Medical Center in Perth Amboy a short time later.Charged with his murder, Alvarez faces 30 years to life in prison if convicted. He has remained at Middlesex County Adult Correction Center in North Brunswick in lieu of $1 million bail since his arrest hours after the slaying.Perrone spent nearly an hour painting a picture of escalating gang harassment fueled in part by Alvarez's on-again, off-again girlfriend joining the gang.But Kevin Flood, assistant Middlesex County prosecutor, drew a simpler sketch of Alvarez as a killer. Alvarez walked up behind Martinez and stabbed him in the side while Martinez was fighting someone else, a wound that pierced his heart, Flood said.
"He made a conscious decision to arm himself with a deadly weapon — a knife," Flood said. "He made a conscious decision not to go home, not to walk away, but to stay there armed with a deadly weapon....He shoved that piece of steel in the side of Tony Martinez's body."At the center of the case is whether Alvarez was actually being confronted by Martinez and another man who were holding bottles as weapons when he stabbed Martinez, as Perrone contended, or whether he attacked Martinez from behind, as Flood argued.Medical evidence will come into play.There is also choppy surveillance video footage showing parts of the brawl. And witnesses will buttress the state's case, Flood said.Alvarez, a powerfully-built man, will take the stand in his own defense, Perrone said.Flood told the jurors that testimony in the case will last two to three weeks.

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