BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
A member of the Hells Angels who punched and killed a man during a country music concert at Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View has been released from jail after posting a $500,000 bond, court records show.
Logan Winterton, 38, of San Francisco, won’t be allowed to contact fellow members of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club while he is free, according to his bail conditions.
Winterton showed a judge appraisal reports from three apartments he owns in San Francisco to prove that he has local ties and isn’t a flight risk.
Winterton is accused of murdering Juan Rangel Gonzalez, 41, of Bakersfield, at a Chris Stapleton show on June 18, 2022.
Winterton and four other Hells Angels were arrested five months later for an alleged night of violence that also sent an off-duty police officer to the hospital.
Winterton’s lawyer, Brian Getz, had asked Judge Brian Buckelew to offer bail in December 2022 and on March 10.
Getz argued that Winterton didn’t know that a single punch would kill Gonzalez, and he had a private investigator track down witnesses who said that Winterton punched Gonzalez in the face — not the back of the head, as Mountain View police Detective Jason Roldan reported.
At both hearings, Buckelew denied bail but left the ruling open for when more evidence, including an autopsy report, would be presented.
“It will be critical to determine: Was the punch so hard that the skull fractured? Or was it the fall forward?” Buckelew said at the Palo Alto Courthouse on March 10.
The Post obtained a copy of Gonzalez’s autopsy report in July.
He died of brain injuries that were consistent with “a kicking or stomping mechanism,” according to Dr. Michelle Jorden, Santa Clara County’s chief medical examiner and coroner.
The base of Gonzalez’s skull was fractured on the right side, Jorden said.
The murder case moved to Judge David Cena’s courtroom in San Jose on Nov. 16 for a preliminary examination. It was the first time that Deputy District Attorney Irene Williams presented her evidence against Winterton.
Dr. Nika Aljinovic testified that in 1,500 autopsies she’s performed, she has “never known cerebral gliding contusions (such as the contusions Mr. Gonzalez had) to result from one punch.”
A security guard, David De La Quintana, testified that Winterton punched Gonzalez the face.
Cena offered Winterton bail at the same hearing, and a bail bond company sent the jail an insured bond, court records show.
Winterton has two remaining co-defendants, both associated with the Hells Angels: Raymond Cunanan, 42, of Pleasant Hill, and Dominic Guardado, 33, of San Francisco.
Cunanan and Guardado are accused of threatening people who saw the punch and getting into a fight with an off-duty police officer 50 minutes earlier. Two others pleaded guilty in February to assault for their roles in the fight with the officer.
Judge Daniel Nishigaya reduced their assault charges to a misdemeanor and sentenced them to a year on house arrest, which they had already served.
Deputy District Attorney Irene Williams said on Thursday that she objected to their sentences “given the nature of the conduct and the severity of the victim’s injuries.”