Outbursts in court as prosecutors lay out evidence in iPad killing

Michael Solid, accused in the killing of a 15-year-old who refused to relinquish his treasured iPad, stayed mostly quiet during four days of testimony in his robbery and murder trial, occasionally whispering to his attorneys.

But on Tuesday, as Chief Deputy District Attorney Agnes Lexis laid out the evidence during closing arguments, Solid rose from his chair.

“No,” the 24-year-old said. “She’s sitting there lying.”

District Judge Valerie Adair quickly interjected as Special Public Defenders Robert Arroyo and Randall Pike tried to calm the defendant.

Prosecutors said Solid acted as a getaway driver, waiting inside a 2002 white Ford Explorer at a service station near the intersection of Charleston Boulevard and Torrey Pines Drive while his friend, Jacob Dismont, wrested an iPad away from Marcos Vicente Arenas, a Las Vegas high school student.

Solid spent 11 minutes at gasoline pumps after paying for $1 worth of fuel just before Arenas was run over on May 16, 2013, Lexis told jurors.

Suddenly, a woman seated behind Solid in the courtroom gallery spoke up. “But his baby was in the car,” she said before a marshal escorted her out of the courtroom. “His baby was in the car.”

Defense lawyers did not dispute Solid was behind the wheel when Arenas was killed, but Arroyo told jurors “we dispute the interpretation of the evidence” and whether Solid “had requisite intent” in the robbery and killing.

No one who testified during the trial mentioned a child in the sport utility vehicle.

Adair asked jurors to disregard the outbursts and briefly recessed the proceeding.

“Mr. Solid, you need to sit there quietly, and if you do it again, the court’s going to take action,” the judge said. “Our options are removing you from the courtroom, taping your mouth or doing something so that you can’t make these outbursts.”

Dismont, now 21, recently pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit robbery and awaits sentencing.

Prosecutors said Marcos had cherished the iPad because his family rarely could afford high-priced electronics. His father, Ivan Arenas, took out a payday loan to purchase the device for $249 from a pawn shop. It had been a birthday gift and a reward for doing well in school.

Marcos struggled and screamed in his last, desperate attempt to hold onto the device, prosecutors said. Traffic stopped as he was dragged from a sidewalk onto Charleston Boulevard.

In one of the final moments Tuesday, Chief Deputy District Attorney Jacqueline Bluth referred to Robert Frost’s famous poem “The Road Not Taken,” which ends: “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.”

On a television screen facing jurors and on computer monitors throughout the courtroom, the prosecutor flashed an image of blood spilled on along Charleston Boulevard.

“Michael Solid could have stopped at the gas station,” Bluth said. “Had he not gotten on that road, Marcos Arenas would still be alive. But this is the road he chose to take.”

Jurors deliberated for about an hour and a half Tuesday afternoon and are expected to return to court Wednesday morning.

Contact David Ferrara at dferrara@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-1039. Follow @randompoker on Twitter.