The Fresno County District Attorney’s Office attorneys rested their case Friday before the defense attorneys for one of the accused killers of Caleb Quick called to the stand Jane Doe, a moniker for the girl Quick allegedly sexually assaulted in the act Clovis police say was the motive for his execution-style shooting.
The juvenile murder trial of Cassandra Michael reached its fifth day in a Fresno County Superior Courtroom before Judge Brian Alvarez. Clovis police allege she served as the getaway driver for her boyfriend and alleged shooter, Byron Rangel, in the April 23, 2025, killing of Quick.
The accused were 16 when police said they killed the 18-year-old.
The Bee does not identify alleged victims of sexual assault without their permission, and is instead referring to her as Jane Doe. The judge also ordered local media not to broadcast her image or voice.
She was accompanied on the stand by her own attorney, Michael McKneely, and her parents were in the courtroom. Doe said she knew Michael from school where they both had a class in which they tutored elementary students.
“She’s a very caring friend. She always was there for you if you needed someone to talk to about something,” Doe said about Michael. “She was fun. She made you laugh when you needed it.”
She had met Rangel only once in passing as they were introduced, she said.
The judge ruled Doe’s questioning would be limited. The attorneys were not allowed to ask her details about the assault she said she suffered from Quick, but they could ask her what she said to Michael and how Michael appeared to react.
She briefly referred to the sexual assault that police said happened April 13, 2025, more than a week before Quick was killed at the McDonald’s near Herndon and Nees avenues. Police testified Doe said she had more to drink at a party than she could handle and could not remember how the night ended.
She told police she only learned about it the following day after Quick sent her videos he took of the sexual assault. Doe testified Friday she was at the party on the Sunday night before Spring Break.
“He had done something to me that I hadn’t agreed with him on,” she said during testimony.
Doe confessed to a couple of friends during Spring Break that she had been a victim of assault, she said, and they told her to tell Michael about it.
“They told me to let Cassie know because she and Caleb were close,” she said.
Doe said she told Michael about the assault while accompanied by another friend inside a school bathroom.
“(Cassie) just hugged me and was like, ‘I’m so sorry,’ and she told me it would be OK,” she said. “(I felt) a little sad because I had admitted it to myself about what had happened. But I thought telling her would let her know how to be careful.”
Prompted by questioning from Michael’s defense attorneys, Doe said she never heard Michael say she wanted to hurt Quick or to get revenge.
Before the defense called Doe, their first witness was Starla Montoya, who said she knew Michael from church and Rangel from school. She said while attending Gateway High School in Clovis, Rangel asked her to help him beat up Quick over the alleged sexual assault.
Montoya said he asked her at school a few days before the shooting. She said she submitted what she knew through a tip to Clovis police a week or two after Quick was killed.
“I felt kind of obligated,” she said.
Before resting, the prosecution called a former analyst for the Clovis police, Dustin Watkins, who said he extracted location and other data from the phones of both Rangel and Michael. They were in close proximity much of the time around the killing of Quick, according to Watkins.
He said Rangel had searched on his cellphone “when does footage in the Tesla delete,” and had googled his own name twice in the days after Quick died and before the couple turned themselves in to police. Clovis police testified earlier the Tesla driven by Michael had no recording of any of the events in question.
Watkins also said he did not find any such searches on Michael’s phone.
Prosecutors also called a friend of Michael’s named Dana Moen, who exchanged multiple phone calls with Michael in the hours after Quick was killed. Moen said she learned Quick was killed from a group text thread.
Moen said Michael seemed normal, even giggly, when she first called, but Michael began crying after Moen said she’d heard Quick had been shot.
Surveillance video played in court showed Michael was at the McDonald’s where Quick was killed and saw him after the shooting.
“We did know that Cassie’s story was kind of confusing,” Moen said. “We just thought she was hurt because her friend passed.”
The judge said a pre-planned absence meant the courtroom would be closed all next week. So the closing arguments were set for 10:30 a.m. Aug. 17 in Department 50.
Stephen Quick, left, and son Caleb in an undated photo in Yosemite National Park. Quick was killed April 23, 2025, in a parking lot near Herndon and Willow avenues in Clovis. Opening statements and witness questioning in the trial for one of the two teens accused of murder is set to begin Monday, Aug. 3, 2026. 
Cassandra Michael, 18, enters Department 50 of the Fresno County Courthouse on Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2026, on the third day of trial. She’s accused of the murder of Caleb Quick from April 2025, when she was 16. THADDEUS MILLER tmiller@fresnobee.com 
Cassie Michael, center, sits between her attorneys Jeff Hammerschmidt and Sally Vecchiarelli on Monday, Aug. 3, 2026, on the first day of trial for the alleged murder of Caleb Quick, a teen killed in Clovis over an alleged sexual assault. THADDEUS MILLER tmiller@fresnobee.com
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Reporter Thaddeus Miller has covered cities in the central San Joaquin Valley since 2010, writing about everything from breaking news to government and police accountability. A native of Fresno, he joined The Fresno Bee in 2019 after time in Merced and Los Banos.