USC student will not be charged in fatal stabbing of unhoused carjacking suspect

USC student Ivan Gallegos will not face charges in the fatal stabbing of 27-year-old Xavier Cerf, Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón announced to the public on June 20. The news came less than 72 hours after the LA Police Department booked Gallegos into jail on suspicion of thousands of murder, and community members raised dollars to help pay for Gallegos' $2 million bail.

“The witness accounts and the independent evidence supports Mr. Gallegos' claim that he acted with the actual and reasonable belief that deadly force was necessary to protect himself and others from the imminent threat of being shot by Cerf,” Gascón wrote in a news release. “The use of deadly force under these circumstances was both proportionate and objectively reasonable and would support a claim of self-defense.”

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On June 17, Gallegos — a member of the USC chapter of Delta Tau Delta — heard a car alarm going off near his fraternity house and went to investigate with two of his friends. When the group of three walked outside, they reportedly found Cerf sitting inside a 2010 Mercedes-Benz that belonged to one of Gallegos' roommates. The roommate who owned the car was not present then, but Gallegos and his friends decided to take matters into their own hands.

One friend called 911 to report the alleged break-in while the other carried a large wooden stick. Gallegos, at the time, was armed with a knife.

The group approached the vehicle and asked Cerf to leave. After a few seconds, Cerf allegedly opened the car door and began to reach for his waist while simultaneously announcing that he had a gun. As Cerf reached for his waist, Gallegos grabbed both of Cerf's hands to prevent him from pulling out the alleged gun, Gascón wrote.

During the clash, Gallegos stabbed Cerf a total of four times.

According to the District Attorney's Office, Cerf then “walked away from the car,” and Gallegos and his friends walked back inside and waited for the police to arrive.

After police arrived at the Row, they found Cerf suffering from his injuries in a nearby alleyway. When paramedics arrived, they pronounced Cerf dead at the scene.

Gallegos stayed and cooperated with the police, Gascón wrote. Before he was arrested on suspicion of murder, Gallegos told the officers that Cerf said he had a gun, but law enforcement never recovered a gun from the scene.

The day after the incident, Gallegos's two friends conducted an exclusive interview with The magazine and said Gallegos had stabbed Cerf in self-defense. The two would not say where Gallegos' knife came from or how many times Gallegos stabbed Cerf.

In a GoFundMe campaign created to support Gallegos, his mother Violet claimed her son was acting in self-defense when he stabbed Cerf. Gallegos found himself in that situation “due to the lack of safety measures around his campus,” according to the post.

Liam Melley, the president of the USC chapter of Zeta Beta Tau and a rising junior majoring in psychology, said that an unhoused man once tried to break into the fraternity house over winter break, and that ZBT's house dad was stabbed by an unhoused man last year. Melley said that overall, the fraternity had a peaceful relationship with the nearby unhoused population.

“There was a homeless guy who, somehow the [back] door was just open, and he just walked in, and I thought someone told him to get out. But we usually never have any problems with people trying to come on our property,” Melley said. “There's one homeless guy, his name's Terry, who we let come around all the time. He’s a really nice guy and he’s very friendly.”

Before the LA County Medical Examiner's Office confirmed Cerf's identity on June 19, Cerf was known to the public as a homeless man who appeared to be in his 30s. After Cerf's name was made public, his mother — Yema Jones — shared with the press that he was the father of a 3-year-old boy named Anthony.

On June 20, Jones began a GoFundMe entitled, “Help Bring Xavier Cerf Home.” At the time of publication, the campaign had raised $4,415 of its $8,000 goal to cover the cost of transporting Deer's body to Texas from California.

“Anything will help I just want my son home,” Jones wrote on the webpage. “He has a 3 year old son I just want him laid to rest &'d at peace [sic].”

According to Jones, Cerf had just been released from a mental health facility before his death June 17.

Although Jones acknowledged that her son had a criminal record, she said Cerf was a kind and “vibrant” person. In an interview with the Daily Trojan, Jones said her son “loves to dance, he loves to draw, he has a very goofy personality, but also very spiritual.”

“I'm never going to paint a pretty picture about my son. I'm just going to give you facts. Everybody goes through life issues,” Jones said in an interview with the LA Times. “Regardless, he was still a father. He was still a brother. He was still a son. It didn’t have to go that far.”