She beat Tacoma barista during robbery, shot her, then hit her more. Here’s her sentence
A woman who pleaded guilty to armed robbery in a 2017 stickup at a Northeast Tacoma coffee stand that ended with the barista severely beaten and shot has been sentenced to nine years in prison.
Dominique Maria Reyes, 28, was one of two people charged in the robbery. According to court records, surveillance video showed her shooting into the coffee shop’s window two to three times the evening of July 31, 2017, in the 1600 block of Marine View Drive, then forcing her way in. Outside, Rigoberto Alvarado Jr. waited behind the wheel of a stolen Ford Mustang.
Only a 20-year-old woman was working that evening, and prosecutors wrote in charging papers that Reyes hit her more than 50 times while trying to get her to open the cash register and a safe. The barista refused, and records state Reyes beat her for five minutes while trying to get her to do what she said.
At some point during the attack, the barista smashed a cup on Reyes’ head. In return, the robber shot the woman in the leg, and records state she continued to beat her after she was shot. Reyes stole cash from the tip jar and then fled with Alvarado Jr. in the Mustang.
The car was found crashed less than a half-mile from the coffee stand, but Reyes and Alvarado Jr. eluded police. Witnesses reported seeing them run into the woods, and according to court records, a police dog turned up a pink tank top near a razor-wire fence that was torn and bloodied.
No one was immediately arrested, and delays have continued to hamper the nearly seven-year-old case. Tacoma Police Department detectives identified Reyes and Alvarado Jr. as suspects a year after the robbery using DNA from the tank top and fingerprints found in the stolen car, and the pair weren’t charged until 2020.
Pierce County Superior Court Judge Philip Sorensen sentenced Reyes on Dec. 1 to 108 months, 12 months fewer than prosecutors and the defendant’s attorney had agreed to recommend. Three days before Reyes was first scheduled to be sentenced, in May 2022, she was severely injured in a car wreck.
Her attorney, Ephraim Benjamin, said she was airlifted from where the incident occurred in King County to Harborview Medical Center, where she remained in intensive care for about a month. He said she was lucky to be alive, and he thought Sorensen exercised some lenience in the punishment he imposed.
“Basically, I think the judge felt sorry for her, and this was a heavily negotiated case to begin with,” Benjamin said in a phone call.
The attorney said there were evidence issues in the state’s case that led to this outcome. Reyes wrote in her guilty plea statement filed April 6, 2022, that she was taking advantage of an offer from prosecutors. Charges of first-degree assault, burglary, theft of a motor vehicle and other offenses were dropped as part of the plea agreement.
Reyes was completing a prison sentence at the Washington Corrections Center for Women near Gig Harbor while police were continuing to investigate the case, and according to court records a detective visited her there in 2018 to ask her about the robbery. Records show Reyes was serving time for stealing a vehicle and trying to elude police among other offenses.
Benjamin said Reyes was out of prison by the time charges were brought in this case. He said he thought her time in prison changed her for the better, and afterward she didn’t get into any further trouble with the law.
A week before Reyes and Alvarado Jr. were charged in the robbery, Alvarado was arrested by Auburn police, according to the Seattle Times, and he was subsequently charged in a fatal shooting that occurred in March that year.
Department of Corrections records show he’s currently imprisoned at the Washington Corrections Center near Shelton. Pierce County Superior Court records show a bench warrant for Alvarado’s arrest in the robbery case remains outstanding.
