Suspects in a University Place double homicide are now charged with 1st-degree murder for one
Two men awaiting trial for a double homicide in University Place are now charged with first-degree murder for one of the deaths.
Alex Lopez Leon, 21, and Javier Valenzuela Felix, 30, previously faced two counts of second-degree murder for the May 14, 2018 shootings.
Prosecutors amended those charges earlier this month, so that Lopez Leon and Valenzuela Felix now are charged with first-degree murder for the death of 22-year-old Wilberth Lopez Acala and second-degree murder for the death of 19-year-old Adrian Valencia Cuevas.
Both men pleaded not guilty at arraignment.
According to the original charging papers, detectives found and arrested Lopez Leon, who told investigators that he and the other three men went out to “shoot off some rounds as they drove” and that Valenzuela Felix suddenly shot the front seat passenger in the head and later the driver.
The updated charging papers, filed Nov. 7 in Pierce County Superior Court, give this account:
If the shots were fired by one person, as Lopez Leon told investigators, the evidence “is consistent with the shooter having been on the passenger side of the back seat. That was the position of defendant Lopez Leon,” according to the supplemental declaration for determination of probable cause.
The four men left a social gathering in Tacoma together in a white Dodge Charger and soon after Lopez Acala, the front seat passenger, was fatally shot in the head.
The driver, Valencia Cuevas, was told to drive somewhere in order to get rid of the body and later was shot in the head also.
The bodies were found in the 6100 block of 63rd Street West after a neighbor called to report what looked like two men passed out inside the Charger.
Sheriff’s deputies investigated and found them dead.
“The killing of the driver at the University Place location removed from the area of the killing of the passenger supports an inference that the killing of the driver was thought over beforehand and that the immediate motive for his killing was to eliminate a potential witness to the first killing,” the updated charging papers say.
Those papers say the full motive for the first shooting is not known but that it may be related to drug trafficking.
Lopez Leon was previously convicted for driving 35 pounds of methamphetamine from Mexico into the United States, according to court records.
He allegedly told investigators that he saw media reports that suggested the shootings were drug-related and that he did not come forward because he had a drug warrant and feared he’d be blamed for the killings.
This story was originally published November 20, 2018 at 5:07 PM.
