Man Fatally Stabbed During Feels Show in Santa Ana

According to OC Weekly, on Thursday night at the venue Underground DTSA in Santa Ana, CA, a man was fatally stabbed in the chest. The show was part of the weekly Top Acid Thursdays  series and up-and-coming garage punk band Feels was set to headline. At around 10:30 at 220 E. Third St. in Santa Ana, while the band Ghali was performing the second set of the night, “a short, Hispanic man with long hair tied back in a bun” aggressively and violently moshed. The victim of the crime, Nathan Joe Alfaro, 23 attempted to intervene on behalf of the audience, and a fight broken out with a described “dog pile” of bodies trying to break things up.

While Feels was not yet performing when the incident broke out, lead singer Laena Geronimo was able to witness it occur. She described the manner in which the second man, who was later apprehended and identified as 21 year old Juan Angel Rivera,  was “not moshing in a punk way. More like ‘this is my excuse to fuck people up’ kinda style…It’s not like it had anything to do with the show, he just seemed like a guy who left his house wanting to hurt someone.” She described him as seeming like he was on drugs, and – making this story even more tragic, the crowd managed to get Rivera to leave for a brief period before he returned to the pit, once again taking things to an extreme level.

When the dog pile occurred, it took quite a bit of time for the crowd to realize someone had been stabbed. In fact, Rivera simply got up and walked out of the venue, escaping for a short time before he was arrested by police and charged with Alfaro’s murder.

Later, the band released a statement on their Facebook page that recounted the incident and reveals that the band and many others assumed Alfaro had simply been stabbed in the shoulder and would recover. The next morning they learned the tragic news of his passing at UCI Medical Center in Orange:

Feels just released their debut self-titled full length studio album this February via Castleface Records. Additionally, the quartet from Los Angeles are about to head out on a short Midwestern tour.