Man charged in 1992 Rancho Cucamonga slaying at warehouse party

By Stacia Glenn

Prosecutors Monday charged an Ontario man who is accused of fatally stabbing another man at an underground Rancho Cucamonga party in 1992.

Freddy Najarro, 35, faces a single murder count for the May 16, 1992, slaying of Dennis Smalling, according to a criminal complaint filed Monday in West Valley Superior Court.

Sheriff's detectives arrested Najarro late Friday after a month-long investigation into the cold case. An anonymous tipster recognized Najarro's picture on a deck of cold case playing cards displayed on The Sun's Web site in late July and called the WeTip hotline.

It is the first cold case solved in the playing cards, which were created in mid-January.

Investigators say Najarro and Smalling, then 20, got into an argument at an underground warehouse party on Arrow Boulevard and Najarro stabbed him to death. A partygoer snapped Najarro's picture but detectives were not able to identify him until recently.

Najarro, who faces 25 years to life in prison for Smalling's killing, was recently paroled for a 1996 case in which he pleaded down from murder to voluntary manslaughter.

He is expected to be arraigned today.

To view more sheriff's cold cases on The Sun's Web site, visit www.sbsun.com/coldcases.