Santa Ana Family Feud Comes to Court

SANTA ANA — The neighbors on South Birch Street barely knew each other. But they became involved in a family feud that left George Marquez Ramos dead in his driveway and two of his relatives shot and wounded.

On Wednesday, the accused gunman, Nicolas Esteban, 49, began his trial on first-degree murder charges. The jury in the Orange County Superior Court case is being asked to decide whether Esteban shot three unarmed people in a premeditated attack on Aug. 28, 1996, or whether he acted in self-defense after being harassed and threatened.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Elizabeth Henderson told the jury that Esteban was arguing with the victim’s older brother, Rene Ramos, over a traffic altercation 10 days earlier. The two men agreed to meet in the middle of the street to fight.

Esteban arrived armed with an automatic handgun, Henderson said during her opening remarks. “You don’t come to a fistfight with a gun.”

Defense attorney Charles F. Benninghoff conceded that his client did the shooting but said Esteban was in a “siege mentality” after the Ramos family had verbally harassed him and threatened to burn down his house.

On the day of the shootings, the Esteban family had called the police--as they had several times in the 10 days since the traffic incident--to complain that they were being harassed by the Ramos family, which included six adult men.

Police officers responded but had already left when Esteban shot a fleeing Rene Ramos in the buttocks; killed George Ramos, who was standing in the driveway; and shot their mother, Delores Ramos, in the head and arm as she ran out of the house.

Ironically, the traffic incident that started it all did not result in a crash and did not involve a member of the Esteban family, but a friend of a relative who lived with them. It did result in the severe beating of Hector Ramos, Rene and George’s brother, by the Esteban family friend.

Benninghoff said the Ramos brothers vowed to get even and began a two-week “terror campaign” against their neighbors.

“This was a case of road rage turning into murder,” he said.

Alicia Ramos, 33, left the courtroom in tears when her brother Rene was on the stand. She said attempts by the defense to blame her brothers for the shooting were disturbing to her.

“We had lived on that street for 20 years, and nothing like this had ever happened,” she said. “It’s so sad.”

Since the shooting, Alicia Ramos said, the Esteban family has moved away, but her mother still wants to sell their home to escape the painful memories.