Man was fatally stabbed in Tacoma. Jury to decide if his friend did it as gang initiation

The case against two men accused in the fatal stabbing of another as part of a gang initiation in Tacoma has gone to jurors after four weeks of testimony.

Pierce County deputy prosecutor Greg Greer told the jury during his closing arguments Thursday that 25-year-old Samuel Cruces Vasquez was a husband and father who worked two jobs to provide for his family.

Cruces Vasquez suffered stab wounds to his chest, neck, head and leg April 28, 2016 during a premeditated attack that was part of his friend’s gang initiation, Greer said.

The men on trial, 32-year-old Cesar Chicas Carballo and 26-year-old Jose Jonael Ayala Reyes, are two of four charged with the attack.

“Jose was being initiated,” Greer told the jury.

Jurors are deliberating charges of first-degree murder, second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder against both defendants.

Ayala Reyes told investigators he stabbed Cruces Vasquez in the leg but not anywhere else, according to charging papers.

Attorney Jason Johnson, who is representing Ayala Reyes, told jurors his client hadn’t intended for Cruces Vasquez, his only friend in Washington, to die.

Johnson also argued that his client had motives to overstate his involvement in the attack — fear that his family would be arrested and that he or his family would be killed by the gang.

He and attorney Bryan Hershman, who represents Chicas Carballo, argued that surveillance video played for jurors didn’t show the attack as clearly as Greer suggested.

“We don’t know exactly what was happening,” Johnson said.

Hershman told jurors there was very little evidence against Chicas Carballo.

It’s not clear where he “was at critical points in the evening,” Hershman said.

Detectives said they used receipts, surveillance video, phone records and witnesses to identify the suspects and that they found a knife on the ground, a disposable glove in the victim’s car and one of Ayala Reyes’ shoes caught in the passenger door.

The day he was killed, Cruces Vasquez left a restaurant job at Southcenter Mall, told a friend he was going to get drinks and was found with stab wounds about an hour later in the 7800 block of South Trafton Street. He’d also been run over.

He died from his injuries at Tacoma General Hospital.

Juan Jose Gaitan Vasquez, a 28-year-old already convicted in the case, wrote in his plea statement earlier this year that he and someone else got into Cruces Vasquez’s car, stabbed him and fled.

“Others involved in the conspiracy were outside the car and were there ready and willing to assist as need be,” the statement says.

Gaitan Vasquez was sentenced to 37 years in prison after he pleaded guilty.

Also charged is 24-year-old Edenilson Misael Alfaro, who is in custody in California in connection to a different homicide.

This story was originally published October 25, 2018 at 5:54 PM.