A 19-year-old former altar boy is facing a murder charge after allegedly attacking a homeless man who had been searching through trash in an upscale California neighborhood, in a killing one witness likened to a scene from a “horror movie.”
Conoray Lawantara is accused of fatally stabbing 40-year-old Vanik Voskanyan last week in an alley behind a Beverly Hills apartment building, according to The California Post.
Residents told the outlet that Voskanyan had been going through garbage bins when Lawantara allegedly became enraged, trailed him through the area and confronted him before stabbing him multiple times.
Police later found Voskanyan on the ground in visible distress, suffering from a serious neck wound. He was rushed to a hospital but was pronounced dead a short time later.
“The police were trying to revive this poor man that was lying there with blood, like it was in CSI,” one neighbor told the outlet.
A graphic video obtained by the California Post reportedly shows Lawantara telling officers he acted in self-defense while the victim lay nearby on the pavement, surrounded by blood.
In the footage, the teen, with his blood-covered hands restrained behind his back, claimed he had also been stabbed and said he had been bitten on the finger.
Lawantara was taken into custody and appeared Thursday in a Los Angeles courtroom, where he pleaded not guilty to murder. A judge set his bail at slightly more than $2 million and ordered him to surrender his passport.
Former altar boy Conoray Lawantara, 19, is accused of killing a homeless man, identified as 40-year-old Vanik Voskanyan, in an alley behind a Beverly Hills, California, apartment last week
Neighbors said the homeless man was digging through trash bins when Lawantara allegedly flew into a rage, following him and confronting him before stabbing him several times
Authorities found Voskanyan writhing in agony on the ground with a severe wound to his neck before rushing him to hospital, where he was pronounced dead shortly after
The proceeding also revealed Lawantara’s unlikely past: The Indonesian national was recently an altar boy at Rhode Island’s posh Portsmouth Abbey, an $80,000-a-year private Catholic boarding school, according to The Post.
The deadly altercation unfolded shortly before midnight on August 30, when Beverly Hills police responded to reports of two men fighting in an alley in the 400 block of North Palm Drive, according to authorities.
Officers discovered Voskanyan bleeding from his neck and rendered aid until paramedics transported him to a hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries. Lawantara was also taken to a hospital for treatment.
‘What’s wrong with a man picking trash?’ Brigette Barbie, a neighbor who witnessed the bloody aftermath in the normally posh community, told The Los Angeles Times.
‘The whole stabbing was not making sense to me,’ she added. ‘Why not just leave, turn around, call the police? Why was the knife so necessary?’
Footage captured moments after the violent encounter showed the frantic teen, handcuffed on the ground, insisting he acted in self-defense as he gave police his side of the story.
‘I didn’t reach for him first, he reached for me, his hand went to my leg. And at that time I produced my CCW (concealed carry weapon), it’s a 3.9 inch knife,’ Lawantara said, according to The Times.
When an officer asked where the weapon was, the teen replied, ‘On the ground right there,’ claiming he had told Voskanyan to let him go, but the man refused and continued the scuffle even after he pulled out his knife.
The deadly altercation unfolded shortly before midnight on August 30, when Beverly Hills police responded to reports of two men fighting in an alley in the 400 block of North Palm Drive
Footage captured moments after the violent encounter showed the frantic teen, handcuffed on the ground, insisting he acted in self-defense
Brigette Barbie, a neighbor who witnessed the bloody aftermath in the normally posh community, told the LA Times, ‘Why not just leave, turn around, call the police? Why was the knife so necessary?’
‘He kept pulling at me,’ he said, according to the clip. In another, he claimed he tried to push the alleged victim off him before resorting to violence.
‘He kept going after me. I tried going away,’ he allegedly added.
A chilling video obtained by The Post captured the moments immediately after the stabbing, showing the homeless man stumbling down the alley and groaning in excruciating pain before collapsing to the ground.
Neighbors, however, told investigators a very different story, claiming the alleged victim was walking away rather than provoking the confrontation.
One anonymous resident said Lawantara, who had moved into the building with his girlfriend just weeks earlier, confronted Voskanyan after spotting him searching through the garbage, according to KTLA.
‘The homeless guy was going through the trash bins, and this guy was bothered by it, following him and saying that he shouldn’t be there and he couldn’t be there,’ they told the outlet.
The resident said the man repeatedly walked away before eventually sitting on a couch in the alley, where the confrontation escalated. Lawantara was also stabbed in the ensuing chaos, they said.
He was charged with one count of murder on Wednesday, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office announced. He was discharged from the hospital later that day and booked at the Beverly Hills Police Department.
One anonymous resident said Lawantara, who had moved into the building with his girlfriend just weeks earlier, provoked the confrontation, following the homeless man and telling him he ‘couldn’t be there’
A resident said the man walked away before eventually sitting on a couch in the alley, where the confrontation escalated. Lawantara was also stabbed in the ensuing chaos, they said
Lawantara was recently an altar boy at Rhode Island’s posh Portsmouth Abbey, an $80,000-a-year private Catholic boarding school, according to The California Post
On Thursday, Lawantara arrived in court for his arraignment dressed in a blue jumpsuit, with his girlfriend, who was also at the scene the night of the killing, watching from the gallery as he stood before a judge, The Post reported.
His defense attorney, Debra White, doubled down on the self-defense claim, arguing that the alleged victim reached for her client’s neck and elbowed him during the verbal altercation.
She also said the man bit off a chunk of Lawantara’s finger and stabbed him in the stomach during the violent struggle.
But Judge Keith Schwartz immediately pushed back, saying there was ‘no reason for the defendant to have contact’ with the homeless man in the first place, according to the outlet.
‘He didn’t approach, he wasn’t violent. He was minding his own business,’ Schwartz said, adding that the teen still ‘stabbed him repeatedly, like in a horror movie.’
If he posts bond, Lawantara will be required to wear a GPS monitor. Police said the attack appears to have been an isolated incident and that no one else was involved.
