San Jose nightclub owner speaks out on stabbing death of beloved employee

SAN JOSE, Calif. (KGO) -- There are new details about a beloved Little League coach who was stabbed to death over the weekend in San Jose while working security at the Tres Gringos Cabo Cantina.

Among those details is what police know about the horrific murder. The owner of the nightclub has been in mourning since then but spoke Tuesday for the first time to ABC7 News.

"He was our protector. He kept us safe and he will be dearly missed," nightclub owner David Powell said. Powell said Frank Navarro was not just an employee - he worked there for 16 years - he was family.

"It's absolutely horrifying to me that someone would murder Frank for being denied for a fake ID," Powell said.

That's what Powell said happened to Navarro just after midnight Sunday at the Tres Gringos nightclub. As security manager, he and his team were checking IDs at the door.

They caught someone using another person's driver's license and turned him away.

"The person and his friends with him tried to start an altercation. Frank's team was able to diffuse the situation. They left," Powell said.

But the two came back 15 minutes later. "And like the cowards they are, attacked Frank and my team from the side. And in that scuffle, Frank was stabbed and killed," he said.

A source with knowledge of the probe said that a security camera video shows the scuffle and a man running away carrying a knife.

That same source said police detained two men an hour later in a car that was also captured on video leaving the scene after the attack. Navarro's security team later identified one of the men as an assailant.

The other man's driver's license had been recorded in the database of the club's sophisticated ID scanning system, which is used at the door's checkpoint.

"The picture, the name, the height, weight, hair color, eye color, so we can search by those metrics by time. Able to pull up the ID, get a printout and get it to the police," Powell said.

It is unclear whether those two men are still being detained. ABC7 News' repeated calls to police have not been returned but our source says police may not want to say too much about them while they continue their investigation to see if others were also involved.

The Delgado family has set up a GoFundMe account to raise funds for Frank Navarro's funeral.