Texas man held to answer on involuntary manslaughter of friend in downtown Santa Cruz

SANTA CRUZ — A judge ruled Friday that sufficient evidence exists to proceed to trial in the case of a Texas tourist charged with killing his best friend during a drunken downtown brawl.

Nikolay Groushevskiy, 38, faces a charge of involuntary manslaughter after emergency responders were unable to revive 37-year-old Dallas Ferguson after they found him sprawled on the sidewalk on the night of Nov. 17, 2023, near Front Street and Soquel Avenue.

Prior to making his ruling at the end of the one-day hearing, Santa Cruz County Superior Court Judge Stephen Siegel described the proceedings as a “bizarre” and “very sad case.”

Groushevskiy and Ferguson had traveled to Santa Cruz from Texas, according to police. By the end of the end of their evening together, the two began to fight each other on the street. When Ferguson was either shoved or punched, he fell to the ground and became unresponsive, according to police and testimony.

Santa Cruz County Assistant District Attorney Ilia McKinney presented evidence including a short segment of Santa Cruz city parking garage camera footage capturing the fight from a distance and police officer testimony related to two witnesses. In the video, the two men, identified by police as Groushevskiy and Ferguson, appear as tiny figures moving in the far corner of the footage, with passing vehicle headlights washing out the images’ quality. The witnesses included a mother and daughter in a car waiting at a stoplight nearby, who reportedly saw and heard portions of the confrontation and called 911.

“The witnesses also said that these two were arguing but that they had separated and, at that point, the victim seemed to be more reserved and calm,” McKinney said. “The defendant was shouting and yelling while waving his arms wildly.”

Defense attorney Jaime Longoria argued that his client may have been acting in self-defense after a night of drinking. He added that his client even appeared to have pulled Ferguson away from the street at one point and retrieved his hat from the road before the fight became fatal.

Earlier, Santa Cruz County Sheriff-Coroner’s Office Forensic Pathologist Stephany Fiore testified that Ferguson’s cause of death was blunt-force injury to his head and neck. During questioning, she said the likelihood of his injury — involving a brain hemorrhage proceeded by the rapid rotation of his head and neck — statistically had about a 10% chance of being fatal. The rapid head and neck turn may have been caused by a strong force, like a punch, or even just the threat of force that caused Ferguson to whip around to avoid the blow, Fiore said.

Longoria questioned Fiore on the likelihood that Ferguson had suffered neck trauma earlier in the evening, while the two men reportedly were separated for a period, which slowly led to his death. Fiore said it was difficult to tell how long the fatal injury had been developing that evening but that it likely happened “fairly quick” and that an extended delayed response to such an injury would be highly coincidental and “even more rare.”

Groushevskiy, who has remained out of jail on supervised release, is scheduled to return to court Aug. 12 for arraignment on the information.