Granted the young crowd was likely intoxicated, but the defendant has a rather unbelievable story claiming he was in the water looking for a lost cellphone. A cellphone lost in a river would be not worth retrieving and almost impossible to find unless you knew exactly where it was dropped. He also would have been hampered in his search by the crowd floating in the river and could have waited until they passed. The young people concluded that he was in the river to ogle the young girls and likely over reacted to his presence getting into a shoving match with the defendant. They were unarmed and he could have retreated, but he chose to use his knife. Definitely manslaughter.
Yeah, you could make a case for manslaughter. I agree, it is a shallow river, but it would seem hard to find a cell phone dropped in the river, and it might not be usable anyway. So they probably thought he was there to ogle the girls. He maybe could have gotten away from them when they started calling him names.
Once he started stabbing, he maybe had to keep doing that, as at that point he could get hurt badly if they responded.
I watched the testimony of the “best friend” of the “victim”, the girl who got stabbed, and the black guy in the other group who filmed it. The defendant comes off way better than any of those.
Newer cellphones are a lot more water resistant and EXPENSIVE. Some are even covered by water damage warranty’s... but you need the phone to file a claim.
I would have gone looking for the phone too.