A judge ruled Tuesday that there is enough evidence for a Long Beach man to stand trial on two felony charges of vandalism for allegedly breaking windows at two East Village businesses in June.
Long Beach Superior Court Judge Debra A. Cole ruled that 33-year-old Ryan Verzani would be held to answer for his alleged crimes based on evidence presented at Tuesday’s preliminary hearing. He was released on his own recognizance while he awaits trial.
Verzani is accused of smashing six windows at Wabi Sabi Village Market and a window at Salon Five Hundred on the corner of Broadway and Linden Avenue early in the morning on June 7.
The window-smashing spree grabbed headlines across the region, in part because of the breadth of the alleged crimes. Police at the time said Verzani was suspected of breaking windows at seven total businesses and on about 20 cars in a parking structure next to Chase Bank on the corner of East Ocean Boulevard and Elm Avenue. Prosecutors have so far not explained their decision to file only two vandalism charges.
Downtown Long Beach resident Cristina Wenzl said her car had a window smashed that night, and police told her the parking structure did not have a camera.
In court on Tuesday, Stacey Williams — who works as an assistant to the owner of the Wabi Sabi Village Market — said she was tasked with getting the shop’s windows replaced and paying the bill, which she testified came out to almost $5,000.
Long Beach Police Detective Alberto Leon testified that the damage to Salon Five Hundred’s window cost the business $587.50.
Geronimo Quitoriano, property manager of the Lafayette condominium complex at Linden and Broadway, testified that he saw security camera footage of a man carrying out the window smashing.
The two damaged businesses sit on the bottom floor of the Lafayette and are owned by the Lafayette Association of Homeowners.
At 3:27 a.m. on June 7, a man wearing a hooded sweatshirt with the hoodie up over his head walked out of the building lobby on the Broadway side and walked past the market out of view of the camera, Quitoriano testified.
A few seconds later, a man with the same outfit walked the opposite direction into view of the camera and smashed all six windows of the Wabi Sabi Village Market on the Broadway side, Quitoriano said.
“It was pretty fast,” he said.
At first, Quitoriano said he wasn’t positive the man in the video was Verzani, but when he checked better-lit footage from inside the lobby, he said he recognized Verzani, Quitoriano said.
Quitoriano also ran a report to see which key fob was used to reenter the building after the window smashing. It came back to the unit owner Heloise Torquato, who was renting her unit to Verzani at the time, Quitoriano said.
Torquato told the Long Beach Post previously that she was subletting her condo at the Lafayette Building. She alleged Verzani left her unit “a disaster” with thousands of dollars in damage and had been a problem tenant for months before the alleged vandalism spree.
Verzani moved out in early August after Torquato made repeated attempts to evict him, she said.
The vandalism charges against Verzani typically carry a maximum penalty of three years in prison, but the sentence could be increased because he was allegedly on probation at the time for unlawful possession of a firearm.
Deputy District Attorney Zahra Bazmjow told the court Tuesday that the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office had offered Verzani a plea deal with 16 months of jail time prior to the preliminary hearing. He did not accept the offer.
At the time of the alleged crime, Verzani was also in the middle of another criminal case where authorities alleged he’d broken into two restaurants near the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and vandalized a vending machine at a nearby laundromat.
In that case, court records show Verzani pleaded no contest in August to one count of second-degree burglary and was sentenced to two years of probation.
This pending case is not a violation of that probation, Bazmjow said.