Eight N.Y. Youths Plead Not Guilty in Stabbing Death of Utah Tourist

NEW YORK —  Eight youths pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder and robbery in the stabbing of a young Utah tennis buff who was trying to defend his parents from a mugging on a subway platform.

All were ordered held without bail at an arraignment in state Supreme Court in Manhattan.

Assistant Dist. Atty. Thomas Schiels said human blood and a knife were found in the clothes of the alleged ringleader, Yull Gary Morales, 19.

“He admitted he stabbed Brian Watkins himself,” Schiels said at the arraignment.

Watkins, 22, of Provo, Utah, had accompanied his family on their visit to New York City to watch the U.S. Open Tennis Tournament.

He was killed in a Manhattan subway station Sept. 2 when he and his brother, Todd, 25, pursued muggers who had slashed the pocket of their father, Sherman, 46, and grabbed $200. One of the muggers also punched their mother.

Schiels said some of Morales’ seven co-defendants also pegged him as the stabber. Authorities said he had the weapon in his pants pocket when he was arrested the next day.

Police who searched his Queens apartment found a T-shirt and pants smeared with human blood, Schiels said.

Only one of the eight youths, Louis Fernando Montero, 20, did not make a videotaped confession to police. But Schiels told the judge that eyewitnesses put Montero at the scene of the crime.