Trial begins in 2019 stabbing death of Robert Barela
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Nov. 2—A jury trial began Tuesday for Jonathan Kelly, a 63-year-old Santa Fe man charged with second-degree murder in 2019 stabbing death of Robert Barela.
According to police reports, Kelly and Barela, 51, were new acquaintances and had been partying in an apartment on Lopez Street.
Kelly's attack on Barela was unprovoked, according to the prosecution. But Kelly's public defender argued Barela was the aggressor in a fight that broke out between the two men, who were drinking together along with a female friend of Barela's.
Kelly told police at the time Barela had pulled a knife on him and he'd grabbed the victim's hand and twisted it in the altercation. He used Barela's knife to stab him.
Barela's body was found outside Kelly's apartment building.
Kelly refused to come out of his apartment when police arrived, according to reports from the time, and crisis negotiators spent hours trying to coax him out before they entered his unit and found him unconscious.
Police said at the time they believed Kelly had taken "a large amount of prescription medications," and he was taken to the hospital for treatment.
The prosecution played jurors a recording of a 911 call Kelly's neighbor made in reporting the stabbing.
The neighbor told a dispatcher there was a woman outside her window, asking her to call 911 because there was a man bleeding on the road.
Jurors were also shown crime scene photos, including one that showed Barela with his shirt torn open, lying in a smear of blood on the pavement.
The trial is scheduled to last through Friday.
