outside Pat’s King of Steaks were held for trial Tuesday on charges including murder after gruesome videos of the fightOmar Arce, 33, and Jose Alberto Flores-Huerta, 34, both of South Philadelphia, were seen on a compilation of surveillance videos throwing punches and kicks as a fight between two groups of men at the iconic cheesesteak shop quickly spiraled out of control.
Assistant District Attorney Ed Jaramillo called the brawl “one of the most brutal beatdowns” imaginable, with Arce and Flores-Huerta’s group repeatedly punching and kicking 28-year-old Isidro Cortes and his 64-year-old father — even as they laid motionless on the ground. Lawyers for Arce and Flores-Huerta — James Funt and Jonathan McDonald — tried to persuade Municipal Court Judge Karen Y. Simmons that their clients should not have been charged in Cortes’ killing. Video shows Arce and Flores-Huerta beating Cortes’ friend, they acknowledged, but not throwing a punch or kick in the sustained beat-down of Cortes and his father.
Funt said “the ferocity of this attack was entirely due to” the Pedrazas’ actions, not his client’s. And McDonald added that the notion Flores-Huerta intended to kill anyone “simply does not exist here.”