Eskrima Expert Convicted in NYC Nightclub Stabbing
November 26, 2004
A man trained in Filipino knife fighting was convicted of stabbing to death a bouncer who was trying to enforce New York City’s no-smoking law at a Manhattan nightclub.
Isaias Umali, 32, was found guilty of manslaughter for thrusting a knife into the groin of Dana Blake, 32, after the bouncer tried to evict Umali’s friend for refusing to put out his cigarette. Blake later bled to death.
Prosecutors said Umali, an accountant, is an expert in Eskrima, a martial art that teaches how to deliver deadly knife blows to an opponent.
After the trial in Manhattan Supreme Court, jury members deliberated for just four hours. Umali will face up to 25 years to life when he is sentenced next month.
During the trial, prosecutors outlined how a violent argument between the bouncer and Umali’s friend, 29-year-old Jonathan Chan, quickly turned deadly. Umali and a group of 19 friends were celebrating a birthday at Guernica, a popular club on the Lower East Side when Blake ordered them to stop smoking. Chan started arguing with the 6-foot-6-inch bouncer. The defense claimed that Blake responded by grasping Chan’s throat and choking him, prompting Umali to intervene to defend him. Umali testified that he believed Chan was choking to death and he only intended to get Blake to stop, not to kill him.
Shortly before the killing, New York City enacted a new law banning smoking at all clubs and bars.
Chan, an accountant; his sister Alice Chan, 34, also an accountant; and his brother Alan Chan, 32, a medical student, were all soaked in Blake’s blood during the melee and were later arrested. But the three siblings were later released after the Manhattan district attorney’s office declined to prosecute them, citing lack of evidence. Umali fled and was later arrested at a Queens hospital after he attempted to commit suicide by slashing his wrists and throat the night after the killing.
Chan’s father, 59-year-old Wing Yeung Chan, led Chinatown’s On Leong tong and the notorious Ghost Shadows gang in the early 1990s. He is currently serving a prison term for ordering three murders and conspiracy to commit a fourth.
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