SANTA CRUZ — The murder trial for four men accused in the 2019 kidnapping-murder of Pleasure Point entrepreneur Tushar Atre was pushed back Tuesday to May or beyond.
Joshua Camps, brothers Kurtis and Kaleb Charters and Stephen Nicolas Lindsey were set to stand trial in early April for charges of murder, carjacking, first-degree burglary, kidnapping, kidnapping to commit another crime, second-degree robbery and first-degree residential robbery, plus special allegations.
During a hearing before Santa Cruz County Superior Court Judge Stephen Siegel, all parties agreed to delay the trial’s planned April 3 start, in large part due to a series of legal challenges underway from the defendant’s defense attorneys. A status conference and trial-setting hearing were set for April 25.
According to preliminary hearing testimony in the case, Kaleb Charters and Lindsay were former employees of Atre, working at a marijuana-growing facility on Soquel-San Jose Road in 2019. After a falling out, the former employees left the job for a time before returning with Camps and Kurtis Charters to Santa Cruz in October 2019 from their homes in Southern California.
The group had alleged plans to burglarize Atre’s Pleasure Point home and steal a BMW on the property. Based on testimony describing surveillance footage, Kaleb Charters allegedly dropped the other three off near Atre’s home before driving up to the Soquel-San Jose Road farm. The three allegedly made their way inside Atre’s home, where they were purportedly surprised to find him, before leaving him bound and gagged inside. The three fled the home with cash and Atre’s possessions and were inside his BMW when Atre himself ran out into the street, according to testimony. Two of the men then chased Atre down, possibly stabbing him with a knife before shoving him inside the BMW to take him to the other property. There, Atre was shot and left on a hillside, according to testimony.
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