Mattapan man convicted in 2021 stabbing death of man protecting girlfriend

A Suffolk County jury convicted a Mattapan man Wednesday on a first-degree murder charge in the stabbing of a man two years ago.

Karonn Brown, 51, fatally stabbed 34-year-old Ricardo Garcia in August 2021, according to a statement from the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office.

While driving through Roxbury on the morning of Aug. 8, 2021, Brown and two other men — Derrell Sanford, 28, of Boston, and Dravon Robinson, 38, of Everett — stopped their vehicle and approached Garcia’s girlfriend, prosecutors said.

The three men had allegedly approached other women in the area, as well.

When Garcia saw Brown and the other two men confronting his girlfriend, he ran over to defend her and the three men beat and stabbed him in response, prosecutors said.

After receiving transportation to a local hospital, Garcia died of his injuries, officials said.

“This was a cold, cruel murder preceded by nothing more than a man seeing his girlfriend in a threatening situation and coming to her aid,” Suffolk District Attorney Kevin Hayden said in a statement. “I thank the jury for their verdict and I offer my deepest sympathies to Ricardo Garcia’s family and friends.”

Brown will be sentenced on Monday. His first-degree murder conviction carries an automatic sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole, the district attorney’s office added.

Trials for the two other defendants in this case, Sanford and Robinson, begin Jan. 8.

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