Teenage runaway: Deadly Sunnyside drug den fight started over $600 that didn't exist

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- A teenage runaway revealed new details Wednesday about the killing inside a Sunnyside home that had been turned into a den of drugs. 38-year-old Christopher Zuniga was the victim three years ago.

The girl said she was nauseated before she took the stand and had trouble remembering some details, but what she had to say painted a picture of brutality -- all over a few hundred dollars that didn't exist.

Angela Lopez Flores was just a 15-year-old girl when she found herself in this beautiful Sunnyside home, among several adult strangers.

The runaway said she was happily smoking meth for a few hours before everything took a dark turn. We're not allowed to show her face, but she said a dispute over about $600 ended with two men pounding Christopher Zuniga with a baseball bat and a knife. Zuniga ran away, but the men caught up and continued the beating until he passed out. They still weren't finished.

"I remember him waking up and then they hit him more times, over and over," she said.

The fight started because of a bogus check, written on the account of the woman who owned the home. The drug users had scared her away from her own house, and they still had her checks. This one bounced, but Richard Escalon and Marcos Gonzales didn't know that. Escalon's bank records show several failed attempts to withdraw the money -- and bank cameras caught Zuniga trying to get it. The runaway was with Escalon and Gonzales when they discovered the money wasn't available. After the deadly confrontation, she says Gonzales wouldn't let her leave and she was forced to clean Zuniga's blood.

"Why were you scared?" prosecutor Sam Dalesandro asked Lopez Flores.

"I don't remember cleaning any blood, but it was because he was dead," she said.

Now 19, Lopez Flores was foggy on details from January 2011, and revealed one explanation when asked about the attack.

"I cannot remember," she said. "I told myself I was going to forget."

Escalon and Gonzales are both planning to testify in the case. They say Zuniga threw the first punch and they only killed in self-defense.