‘It’s devastated everything.’ Victims’ relatives address Tacoma man convicted of 3 murders
A 29-year-old man who shot a woman to death in Tacoma and went on to murder two more people at a trailer in the city’s South End before his arrest was sentenced Friday to 56 years in prison.
Paul Michael Harrison Snider pleaded guilty March 25 in Pierce County Superior Court to second-degree murder for the Sept. 4, 2022 homicide of 58-year-old Jeaneane Mattis. The same day he admitted to first- and second-degree murder for the killings of Juan Tinajera Ruvalcaba, 29, and Jose Lopez Cano, 38.
A codefendant, Lashaun Danny Miles, 55, was also sentenced Friday for his involvement in Mattis’ fatal shooting behind a medical clinic, blocks from Tacoma Police Department headquarters.
Miles pleaded guilty Friday to first-degree rendering criminal assistance and first-degree unlawful possession of a firearm. According to court records, he drove Snider to and from the shooting scene, then dropped him off and went home. Judge Garold Johnson gave him no additional jail time, sentencing him to time served for the year-and-a-half he spent in the county’s jail.
In Judge Joseph Evans’ courtroom, where Snider was sentenced, the loved ones of two victims gave emotional testimony about the pain the defendants’ crimes had caused them and their families.
Jason Keele, 55, said Mattis, his wife of 10 years, planned to fly out to Illinois to move in with her son before she was killed. Keele had just retired, and he said he was going to follow her so they could “go play grandma and grandpa for the grandkids.”
“This devastated everything,” he said. “It’s ruined my life, ruined everything. My retirement, everything’s gone now.”
Keele held a large printed photo of Mattis smiling and leaning against an ATV as he spoke. Mattis, who went by Marcy, loved to ride, Keele told The News Tribune after court adjourned. She grew up in Lewis County, and she served in the U.S. National Guard. She was also a rock hound, and she taught Keele how to smelt gold. Most of their retirement savings were in gold, silver and her jewelry, he said.
Mattis was living in a trailer on the sidewalk near 37th and Pine streets when Snider shot her. Keele said as soon as her body was recovered by the Pierce County Medical Examiner, her trailer was looted for everything inside. Keele said homeless people in the area took her things.
Still, Keele said in court that he’d let go of all their material items to have his wife back.
“She helped everybody, she fed everybody, she’d give you the clothes off her back if you needed it,” Keele told the court, with tears in his eyes. “If she saw you hurting she was there.”
September ‘22 homicide
Tacoma Police Department officers found Mattis shot in the head shortly after midnight. According to charging documents, a witness told detectives that he’d been hanging out with Mattis and another man next to her trailer when a car pulled up.
It was Miles, with Snider in the passenger’s seat. Miles was looking for a man nicknamed “Taco” who lived in a trailer adjacent to Mattis. The man wasn’t there, and shortly after Miles returned to his vehicle, Snider got out. The witness told police he was acting agitated.
The witness retreated to his vehicle, but he heard Mattis yelling at Snider to leave, records state. Snider pulled a gun and held it to the woman’s head. Eventually, he returned to Miles’ car while Mattis continued to yell at him. Snider returned to Mattis and shot her in the head.
Charging documents state that the witness told detectives he believed he heard Miles tell Snider to shoot her, but in more recent court records, prosecutors wrote that the witness changed his story several times in his interview.
When detectives caught up with Miles and questioned him, he said he wasn’t paying attention when Snider shot Mattis.
“He asked Paul why he shot the lady and Paul told him it was because she was talking too much,” charging papers state.
Snider was not arrested until shortly after he killed two people in Tacoma more than two months later, but prosecutors said the only evidence that tied him to Mattis’ murder was Miles’ testimony. Deputy prosecuting attorney Sunni Ko wrote in court records that Miles’ cooperation with authorities was instrumental in securing Snider’s guilty plea.
Double murder on South Hosmer Street
The murders of Juan Tinajera Ruvalcaba and his friend, Jose Lopez Cano, occurred sometime between 3:12 a.m. and 6:17 a.m. at a trailer parked near the 8000 block of South Hosmer Street. Surveillance videos from a nearby sporting goods store and Ring cameras showed Snider entering and exiting the trailer at those times.
Snider was then seen walking west on South 80th Street to another trailer, where detectives arrested him the same afternoon. He had blood on his pants, and court records state he was wearing the same getup that the suspect was wearing in surveillance footage: all dark clothes with reflective stripes around the knees.
A motive in the shooting remains unclear, and it’s not clear if Snider knew the men he killed.
The man shot inside the trailer, Lopez Cano, appeared to have been killed first, according to court records. He was identified only as “John Doe” when prosecutors charged Snider with his murder, but he was later ID’ed by the medical examiner, with his hometown listed as “unknown.”
Police found him lying on a bed with a single gunshot wound to the head. The other victim, Tinajera Ruvalcaba, was found directly in front of a door to the trailer. Surveillance video reportedly showed the man working on a bicycle on the sidewalk before he was shot.
Tinajera Ruvalcaba’s younger brother, Ricardo Tinajera Ruvalcaba, 26, told the court during Snider’s sentencing hearing that his brother was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and his murder had taken a toll on their family. He left behind two children. Ricardo said it was “heartbreaking” for their mother to see her son in a casket.
The brother told the judge he’d like to see more funding for police to keep people like Snider off the streets. He said the murder of his brother and his brother’s friend probably would have been prevented if more people were involved in the process of tracking down Mattis’ killer.
Outside the courtroom, Ricardo told the newspaper his brother was homeless for just a month before he was killed. Before that, he was living in an apartment on Hosmer Street, but Ricardo said his brother was kicked out because he couldn’t pay rent for a couple of months.
The last time Ricardo spoke to Juan was a couple of weeks before the shooting, when his brother told him he wanted them to be closer to one another.
Ricardo said most of his family immigrated to the United States in 2005 from the Mexican state of Aguascalientes, one of the country’s smallest states. He and his brother grew up in Tacoma. Juan was always working with his hands, Ricardo said, and he never stopped working, whether it was construction, landscaping or odd jobs to help take care of his family.
“I just want more awareness for family members to help out their loved ones if they’re struggling to try to help them get out of the streets,” Ricardo said.
He added that he’d like to see more programs for people who are struggling to pay rent, alongside increased efforts to get drugs and guns off the streets.
Snider made a brief statement before he was sentenced. Speaking quickly, the man said he wanted to apologize to the families for his actions, and he hoped he would be given a chance to show he can change.
The man’s words felt empty, Ricardo said. Mattis’ husband didn’t find them genuine.
“There’s no soul in that person,” Keele said.
This story was originally published April 13, 2024 at 7:00 AM.
