The teenager testified Friday that she remembered few details of what happened the night her 15-year-old boyfriend, David Gutierrez, was stabbed to death during a Valentine’s Day date at Santana Row.
But when the prosecutor in the suspect’s murder trial showed her a close-up photograph of herself that night a year ago, her hands covered in his blood seeping up the cuffs of her pink sweatshirt, her emotions poured out. Her shoulders shook and tears ran down her face.
“What were you doing before the paramedics arrived?” Santa Clara County Deputy District Attorney Vietnam Nguyen asked.
“Asking for help,” she said, and “pressing down the wounds.”
The upscale, outdoor mall was crowded that holiday evening, security footage showed, with couples on dates and parents holding babies passing by when David was attacked. But the girlfriend, now 16, is the prime witness against the alleged gang member who was just 13 when he was arrested last year. Prosecutors, laying out their case before Judge Andrea Flint in juvenile court, attempted to show that neither David nor his girlfriend did anything to provoke the attack, and that both David, who died at the hospital that night, and his girlfriend who witnessed it, are victims.
The suspect’s defense lawyer, Jennifer Redding, suggested a possible self-defense case as she began cross-examining the girlfriend in the final minutes of the day with questions about reported statements suggesting the accused boy tried to avoid the fatal encounter. She will retake the stand on April 6.
As she testified Friday, David’s girlfriend wore a white T-shirt with his photograph on the front and angel wings on the back — the same “in loving memory” shirt his mother and several other family members wore in the small courtroom.
Because the girlfriend and the suspect, now 14, are both juveniles, the Mercury News is not naming either of them.
Authorities say David was first attacked in front of the El Jardin restaurant by a group of five alleged gang members, including the 13-year-old who they say threw the first punch. David was targeted, authorities say, because he was wearing red – the color of a rival gang even though David had no gang ties. David’s family says he wore a red jacket, like his girlfriend wore pink, to celebrate the holiday.
According to several videos played in court Friday, after a security guard broke up the initial attack, the group fled. The 13-year-old suspect had run in the opposite direction, however, and when he pivoted back, he encountered David again, along with his girlfriend, who had run across to the plaza fountain next to the movie theaters.
Only seconds had passed, but by then, the girlfriend testified, bruises were already forming on David’s eye and face. The silent footage shows the three arguing before the suspect appears to charge and stab David repeatedly.
David staggered off and collapsed on the sidewalk, videos played this week showed. His girlfriend knelt beside him, cradling his head at one point and pressing her hand to his chest. David was pronounced dead at the hospital that night.
The killing of a young teenager allegedly by an even younger one has cast a spotlight on California’s juvenile justice system that focuses on rehabilitation over punishment for even the most violent young offenders. When David’s family learned that the harshest sentence for a 13-year-old killer is 8 months in a youth camp, they staged protests outside court hearings for months, demanding the suspect be treated as an adult “for an adult crime.”
Diana Gutierrez wears a memorial t-shirt with a photo of her nephew, David Gutierrez, at their home in Redwood City, Calif., on Wednesday, July 16, 2025. David Gutierrez, 15, was stabbed to death by a purported 13-year-old gang member at Santana Row while he was on a Valentine’s Day date. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
On the stand, David’s girlfriend was so soft spoken that Judge Flint encouraged her to move the microphone closer. Under questioning from the prosecutor, she said she had met David, a sophomore at Sequoia High School in Redwood City, at the Great America amusement park in Santa Clara and they had been dating for a year.
She described the initial attack where the alleged gang members threw David to the ground, punching and kicking him as he tried to shield his head from their blows, then the second encounter when the murder suspect — the youngest of the group who was now on his own — pulled a knife.
He “asked us where his friends had gone,” the girlfriend testified. “We didn’t know and things escalated from there.”
The two boys “kept saying stuff to each other back and forth,” she said. “I don’t know how or when they started fighting and that’s when the suspect pulled out his pocket knife and started stabbing David.”
Meanwhile, “I was just kind of standing there saying stuff to him, but he wasn’t paying attention to what I was saying,” she said. “I was probably just saying to leave, ‘you just fought him. Why are you back here?’”
In court earlier this week, defense lawyer Redding had suggested that David’s girlfriend had egged the two boys on, telling the suspect that her boyfriend was going to “kick his ass.”
But under cross examination Friday, the girlfriend said she didn’t remember what she had said during the heat of the moment, or that David was looking to take an opportunity to fight for himself.
“Do you recall telling (the officer) that your boyfriend approached the boy and asked for a one on one?” Redding asked.
“No,” the girlfriend replied.
“Do you remember the suspect … telling David, ‘I already got you, I already got my hits in?’” Redding asked her.
“No,” she said.
When Redding presented her with a transcript of her interview with police that night, and then a videotape of that interview, the girlfriend still testified that she had no memory of even being interviewed by police.
Earlier this week, a police officer who reviewed security videotape of the stabbing testified that he thought David might have been armed because of the way his arms were swinging in the video. But David’s girlfriend testified Friday that neither of them had a knife or any weapon that night.
As she struggled to remember details of that night, she said, “everything happened so fast.”