Trial Is Underway in Fatal Stabbing of Football Player

Jurors began hearing testimony Monday in the trial of an Oxnard man accused of fatally stabbing a semipro football player during a fight over a woman earlier this year.

Artis Jackson, a 25-year-old Oxnard resident who played football for the Pasadena-based California Bandits, died in March as a result of stab wounds to the neck and back.

Robert Hosea surrendered to police four hours after the stabbing and was later charged with murder.

Police and prosecutors said Hosea and Jackson knew each other and got into an argument over a woman they both knew.

During opening statements in Hosea’s trial Monday, a prosecutor told jurors that evidence would show that Hosea deliberately stabbed Jackson during a fight over Jackson’s girlfriend.

But Hosea’s court-appointed lawyer told jurors that his client acted in self-defense in the fight outside the Vineyard Avenue apartment complex where Jackson lived with his girlfriend, their 7-year-old son and other relatives.

Testimony is scheduled to resume today in Ventura County Superior Court.