SAN DIEGO — Testimony began Wednesday morning in a deadly hit-and-run case that claimed the life of a popular University Heights bartender.
Brandon Janik, 38, faces a first degree murder charge in the death of 47-year-old Joshua Gilliland. Prosecutors said Janik drove drunk and hit and killed Gililand as he was walking to work back in June of 2023. Gililand was a bartender at Cheers.
Up first on the witness stand, a woman named Fatima Cheatom who testified she went on a date with Janik the day the victim was hit.
She told the jury there is a lot she doesn't remember about that day, it was a year and a half ago and she had been drinking.
Prosecutors walked her through several text messages between the two of them. Cheatom testified she met Janik on Tinder the same day of their date. She told the jury they met up that afternoon at a bar in the Hillcrest area near where she lived. They both later went home to walk their dogs. She said she believed they met up again that evening. She testified Janik picked her up in his BMW and drove her to CJ's on Washington Street.
She testified she's a regular there, she knows the bartenders. She bought a couple of drinks, she believes he had some drinks, but doesn't remember him leaving the bar. However, she said he wasn't sober when he left.
Prosecutors accused Janik of running a red light and hitting Gilliland at the three-way intersection of Normal Street and El Cajon and Park Boulevards. He was taken to the hospital where he died four days later.
Janik was arrested three months later.
This trial is expected to last well into next week.