SAN DIEGO – After being found mentally competent in a 2018 homicide, an alleged killer’s attorney has again sought a new mental competency hearing, now set for April 2.
Christian Louis Ewing, now 36, has spent most of the last seven years at a state mental hospital since the Dec. 5, 2018 murder of Gregory Freeman, 57, who was beaten to death by a baseball bat on Rosecrans Street near Pacific Highway in the Midway District.
Criminal proceedings were again halted on Feb. 20 when his attorney, Manuel Avitia, expressed a doubt about his client’s mental ability to understand court procedures.
A judge found him mentally competent on Nov. 10, 2025, but that finding only lasted three months.
Ewing, who remains at the Rock Mountain Detention Facility on $1 million bail, will be interviewed by a psychologist or psychiatrist at the jail who will write up a report. A San Diego Superior Court judge will make a ruling as to whether Ewing is mentally competent and should stand for a murder trial.
Ewing’s DNA was found on the barrel of the baseball bat at the scene. The dispute between the two men has not been revealed publicly, as there has not been a preliminary hearing due to the competency issue.
Ewing is the same man who rushed the stage at Petco Park in 2015 when singer Taylor Swift was performing a concert. They held him, and Swift continued her song without interruption. He later pleaded guilty to felony battery against Swift’s security guards.
