Rumors that David Reyes, the man who confessed to killing former
Garlic Queen Franca Barsi, would plead guilty today packed the San
Martin courtroom with police, victim’s advocates and relatives of
both Reyes and Barsi.
Gilroy – Rumors that David Reyes, the man who confessed to killing former Garlic Queen Franca Barsi, would plead guilty today packed the San Martin courtroom with police, victim’s advocates and relatives of both Reyes and Barsi.
But attorneys asked to defer Reyes’ plea for two weeks. Deputy district attorney Ted Kajani said he needed to do “a bit more research … to reach resolution in this case.” The plea was rescheduled for 9am Friday, Sept. 14 – more than one year after Barsi’s death.
The hearings have brought Reyes and Barsi’s relatives into tense proximity over the past year, as attorneys delayed the plea again and again. Reyes confessed to killing Barsi, his on-again, off-again girlfriend, in a fit of rage after an argument at her Westwood Drive apartment last Sept. 12, police said.
Her murder rattled friends and family who recalled her vivacity and promise as a young woman, and brought domestic violence to the forefront in Gilroy. Recently, when 16-year-old Monique Carabajal went missing with her 22-year-old boyfriend, her mother invoked Barsi’s death, saying she feared for her safety; survivors of domestic violence who came forward to get protective orders from Community Solutions in the months after Barsi’s death cited the case as a motive.
Barsi was survived by her young son Andrew.
Reyes appeared on the Dispatch’s Most Wanted page in 2006, after failing to register as a sex offender and committing an armed robbery at Rock Zone, a First Street shop. He was previously convicted of assault with intent to commit rape and has been arrested multiple times for battering women and drug abuse.
If convicted of murder, Reyes faces a maximum possible sentence of a life sentence with the possibility of parole after 25 years.
