SAN DIEGO — Witnesses took the stand on Tuesday in the murder trial of former TikTok star Ali Abulaban who is charged in the shooting deaths of his wife, 28-year-old Ana Abulaban and 29-year-old Rayburn Cardenas Barron.
Prosecutors played a TikTok video in court showing Abulaban broadcast live on social media from the apartment he shared with Ana while she was on the phone with police in the months leading up to her death.
Ana's best friend Julia Stuntz testified that three months before her murder, she saw injuries on Ana's face.
"She took her shades off and I look at her, and she's bruised from her left side of her face from her eye down to her lip, and I told her, 'What happened?' And she said her and Ali were laying in bed and they got into an argument, and he got on top of her and he just was hitting her and kept hitting her and kept hitting her," Stuntz said.
Three weeks after that, Stuntz said Ana called her again saying she and Abulaban had been fighting and she wanted to go to a hotel. When Stuntz picked her up, she said they noticed Abulaban was following their car.
Opening statements were delivered Wednesday in Downtown San Diego court.
Both victims were found dead on a couch in the living room of the Abulabans' 35th floor unit at the Spire San Diego luxury apartment complex.
Abulaban allegedly picked up his 5-year-old daughter from her school after the shooting -- telling her at some point that he "hurt mommy," prosecutors allege -- but was stopped and arrested by police later that day near the interchange of the 805 and 15 freeways.
Abulaban, who went by the handle JinnKid on various social media platforms, is charged with two counts of first-degree murder, with allegations of using a handgun in the slayings, and a special-circumstance allegation of committing multiple murders.
While Deputy District Attorney Taren Brast argued Abulaban was regularly abusive and controlling toward his wife, Abulaban's defense attorney, Jodi Green, told jurors Ana was abusive in her own way, and Abulaban's mental health spiraled amid his fruitless attempts to keep her happy, which were exacerbated by his undiagnosed bipolar disorder and the scars of abuse he weathered from his childhood.
Brast told jurors Abulaban was abusive from the beginning of their relationship, but his controlling, violent behavior escalated following the couple's move to San Diego in early 2021.
After multiple instances of domestic violence and seemingly endless accusations of infidelity, Ana sought to leave the marriage, Brast said. The final straw came about a month before the killings, when Abulaban slept with another woman, Brast said, leading Ana to start seeing Barron.
This enraged Abulaban and in one text message exchange with his cousin, Abulaban said, "I saw Ana with another man ... I'll kill him," according to the prosecutor.
Days prior to the killings, Ana asked her husband to move out of their apartment, and while he agreed, he secretly made a copy of the apartment key, Brast said.
On the morning of Oct. 21, he used the copied key to enter the apartment, vandalized the unit, then installed an app on his daughter's iPad that allowed him to monitor live audio inside the apartment.
While listening to the app later that day, he overheard his wife and Barron talking and laughing.
In a rage, Brast said he drove to the complex from a Mission Bay hotel where he was staying, ran to the apartment, and opened fire on the victims within one second of entering the unit.
After the shooting, Brast said Abulaban took pictures of the bodies and sent them to his parents and a friend, and later confessed to his mother, "I just shot and killed Ana."
Green did not deny that Abulaban committed the killings, but argued that the collapse of his relationship and his mental health took its toll on his psyche, causing him to react without thinking rationally.
She said Abulaban was always insecure, but after meeting Ana he felt "worthy of love for the first time in his life." Green said Ana exploited those insecurities and "liked that Ali depended on her so much for his feelings of worth and validation."
After the birth of their daughter, Ana grew tired of playing the role of wife and mother and pushed for the family to move to San Diego, where a number of her friends lived and she could return to her previous lifestyle of partying, Green said.
During this time, Abulaban's notoriety posting comedy skits on social media as "JinnKid" took off. Green said Abulaban's rising fame and the attention from other women it produced turned Ana "resentful and bothered that she wasn't the source of his confidence."
Green said Abulaban started receiving conflicting signals from Ana, who veered between representing that she wanted to leave the marriage and wanted to stay.
She suggested seeing other people, then became enraged when Abulaban met another woman, according to Green, though Ana had already begun a relationship with Barron.
"His heart was exploding from Ana's constant back-and-forth," Green said.
Though he suspected Ana had been unfaithful, Green said Abulaban installed the app on his daughter's iPad to prove it.
When he heard Ana and Barron, he went to the apartment to confirm his suspicions.
When he opened the door and saw Ana and Barron cuddling on the couch, it made "all judgment and reason fly out the window," Green said.
The attorney argued that in the moment, Abulaban felt "as though he was in the passenger seat of his body. Not in control, not in his right mind, but overcome with so much intense emotion. Simply out of his mind."
Green said Abulaban was in "the grips of mania" at the time and her witnesses will include a clinical psychologist who will testify regarding his mental health struggles.
"All of this evidence will explain to you how Ali presented that day. Psychologically compromised, at the brink ... in a place where his ability to reason and to function was so fractured and broken, that he reacted out of passion and provocation, rather than from judgment or malice."
Abulaban is also expected to testify during the trial, which is estimated to last about a month.
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