The preliminary hearing for four young adults charged with the
murder of a teen just blocks from the Gilroy Police Department is
set to begin next week.
The preliminary hearing for four young adults charged with the murder of a teen just blocks from the Gilroy Police Department is set to begin next week.
Attorneys expect the hearing to last two weeks. The proceedings were scheduled to begin Monday but one of the defense attorney’s involvement in a car accident pushed the hearing out a week.
Nov. 11, 2008, Larry Martinez, 18, was shot and killed by a rival gang in broad daylight near Sixth and Church streets, according to police. Invoking a rarely-used rule – the provocative act murder theory – District Attorney Dolores Carr charged not only the man police believe pulled the trigger, alleged Sureño gang member Cristian Jimenez, but also two of Martinez’s friends and a cousin for contributing to his death for the benefit of a criminal street gang.
Robert Barrios, 21, Heather Ashford, 19, and Angel Solorzano, 20, did not intend to kill Martinez, their attorneys said. But even though they didn’t fire the gun that killed their friend and cousin, the three face conspiracy and murder charges for contributing to Martinez’s death during a clash with a rival gang. Martinez, Solorzano and Barrios were Norteño gang members, police said.
But Martinez’s grandmother, Joann Duran, who stood outside the courtroom Tuesday morning as attorneys conferred inside, said that even though the teen had a troubled past, he was working to turn his life around. Released from Preston Youth Correctional Facility just days before his death, Martinez planned to attend a job interview the day he was killed, she said.
Duran drove up from her home in Gilroy Monday and Tuesday to attend the proceedings in San Jose.
“I am here for Heather and the two boys,” Duran said of Ashford, Barrios and Solorzano. “They did not kill my grandson.”
Ashford and Martinez were cousins, and Barrios and Solorzano grew up with Martinez, said Duran, who is also Ashford’s godmother.
“He and Heather were like this,” she said, holding up two fingers pressed tightly together.
Jimenez, 22, also faces a murder charge and a felony gun possession charge for pulling the trigger of the gun that killed Martinez, according to court documents.
About half an hour before the shooting, Jimenez and two other Sureños who are still at large – Edgardo Centeno, 20, and an unnamed juvenile – threw a rock at the car Martinez and Solorzano rode in while Ashford drove, according to police. After a brief discussion, Ashford, Martinez and Solorzano picked up Barrios and returned to confront the Sureños, police said. Armed with a small bat, Martinez and his friends snuck up on the Sureños from behind, provoking the rival gang members to turn and shoot, prosecutors said.
The specific details leading up to the shooting are unclear as the police reports and court file have not been made public. Police only released a three-page “statement of facts” after the incident because of the violent nature of the shooting and the gang affiliations of those involved.
The four codefendants’ preliminary hearing is scheduled to begin 9 a.m. April 26 in Department 39 of the Hall of Justice in San Jose.
