A Kaneohe Shopping Center guard testified that accused murderer Glenn Keohokapu Jr. threatened to stab Steven Wilcox shortly before the victim received a mortal knife wound to the heart.

The second-degree murder trial of Keohokapu, 36, began yesterday in Circuit Court.

Deputy Prosecutor Kristine Yoo and defense attorney Benjamin Ignacio gave jurors radically different descriptions of the altercation that began around midnight June 8, 2008, inside Club Komomai in Kane'ohe.

"A fair fight. That's what Steven Wilcox thought he was getting into," Yoo said in her opening statement.

But Keohokapu pulled out a folding knife and "plunged the entire length of the 3 1/2-inch blade into the heart of Steven Wilcox," she said.

Her comments were accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation that included an enlarged autopsy photograph of the 19-year-old victim's lacerated heart.

Ignacio told the jury that at the end of the trial they would find Keohokapu "not guilty because he acted in self defense ... in the face of naked, unexplained aggression" from Wilcox.

The victim's younger brother, Shaun Wilcox, was the first witness to testify, saying he had to go to the medical examiner's office to identify his brother's body.

Steven Wilcox was the oldest of triplet brothers, said Shaun, an associate pastor at Hope Chapel in Waimanalo.

Kaneohe Shopping Center security guard Anthony Bryant was next to testify, telling the jury that he saw Keohokapu and Steven Wilcox scuffling in the parking lot but that neither appeared to land any blows because a third man, Keohokapu's brother, Stille, was between them, trying to break up the altercation.

Bryant said that when he told the men that police were coming, Glenn Keohokapu "broke away" and went to a car in the parking lot.

Then, Bryant said, he heard Keohokapu say, "Come and I'll stab that f---er."

The two men began fighting again behind a truck in the lot and when Wilcox came into view again, "blood was shooting out from his rib cage," Bryant said.

According to Yoo, Wilcox had gone to the karaoke bar with a family friend and Keohokapu first became upset when the friend tried to speak to Keohokapu's wife, Kauilani, inside the club.

Wilcox bought "a round of drinks for everyone to smooth things over," said Yoo.

But Keohokapu was still upset and went outside, followed by his wife and brother, she said.

When Wilcox went outside and saw Keohokapu pushing his wife, Yoo said, the younger man "yelled out, 'Hey, that's one wahine, that's one female.' "

The two men then began scuffling in the parking lot after Wilcox, who was carrying a bottle of beer, put the drink down and took off his shirt and a gold chain he was wearing, according to the prosecutor.

"Steven wanted to have a fistfight that night," she said.

But Keohokapu stabbed him in the heart and he fell in the parking lot with "blood spurting out with every heartbeat," said Yoo.

Keohokapu left in a car with his wife, but only after dropping the knife in the parking lot at the insistence of his wife, the prosecutor said.

Ignacio said Wilcox was the aggressor who "injected himself" into the business of Keohokapu and his wife.

Keohokapu didn't want to fight and there was "something about" Wilcox that worried the defendant, the lawyer said.

After retrieving the folding knife from his car, Keohokapu "even warned Steven (by saying), 'Hey, I got a knife,' " Ignacio said.

"No one saw the fatal moment. No one had the perfect view," Ignacio said.

"Sadly, Steven bled out in the parking lot."