Zavala testified she tried to kick a man she didn’t know at the time, but now knows as Binh Dinh, who testified earlier in the case. Zavala said she kicked at Dinh during a chaotic fight because she thought he was going after her friend, Emilia Calderon.
On cross-examination, Deputy District Attorney Troy Pino suggested Zavala’s story was a lie concocted to explain a video that shows her kicking someone.
Pino questioned why Zavala never told the story to Santa Ana police detectives who questioned her about 48 hours after the fight, while Pham lay barely alive in a hospital. An audio recording of that interview was played to the jury Thursday morning. In that interview, Zavala repeatedly denied kicking Pham, but didn’t mention kicking someone else – even when police repeatedly asked her to explain why her account didn’t match the kick seen in an eyewitness video.
