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23-Year-Old Stabbed To Death At Punk Show

A young man was fatally stabbed while attending a show at a nightclub in Santa Ana Thursday night.ABC 7 reports 23-year-old Nathan Joe Alfaro was at the Underground DTSA nightclub, on the 200 block of East 3rd Street, listening to a band play when he got into an altercation with another man—allegedly while they were both in the mosh pit. The man then stabbed Alfara in the upper torso, and fled, according to police.
Alfaro made his way out of the club, and collapsed on the street. He was taken to a nearby hospital in critical condition, and was later pronounced dead.
According to the L.A. Times, the club was hosting Top Acid Thursdays, billed as an "indie, garage, psychedelic and funk show." The bands playing included Feels, Santoros, the Hurricane, Ghali and the Jail Birds. The show was canceled and the club shut down after the stabbing, says NBC Los Angeles.
On Friday afternoon, Santa Ana police announced that 21-year-old Juan Angel Rivera had been arrested in connection with the stabbing.
Laena Geronimo, vocalist/guitarist for Feels recounted the stabbing to the O.C. Weekly:
...The suspect was definitely pissing off the the crowd with his one-man mosh pit and was even attacking people on the outskirts of the room away from the band. "Not moshing in a punk way," Geronimo says. "More like 'this is my excuse to fuck people up' kinda style." The unidentified victim was described as a bigger guy who tried to control the suspect who Geronimo says appeared to be under the influence of drugs at the time of the incident. Someone even got the suspect to leave briefly, Geronimo says. But then he returned moments later and a fight broke out.
"All of the [sic] sudden it became a dog pile on the stage, it knocked over the mic, the band was still playing, the drummer was still going and it was this crazy dog pile on the stage of people swinging at each other and trying to pull people off each other," Geronimo says. She found out later that the suspect had a knife tucked in a sheath on his belt. The victim who was stabbed was apparently tangled in the dog pile with the suspect.
Feels also posted this message on their Facebook page today:
We are completely devastated, so totally at a loss for words but feeling the need to say some things in honor of the...
Posted by Feels on Friday, March 4, 2016
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