Jurors shown soldier accused in killings firing 'his toy'

The first image jurors saw Thursday in the first-degree murder trial of a Fort Carson soldier was a video clip of Jomar Falu-Vives holding an assault rifle at a target range.

The brief clip shows the 25-year-old Iraq war veteran wearing a blue bandana on his head as he slaps the back of the weapon, hefts it up to his shoulder, squeezes off several rounds and looks straight into the camera.

That’s the man who killed two people and wounded another “in cold calculating and senseless acts,” Chief Deputy District Attorney Diana K. May told the jury in opening arguments.

That’s the gun, or as he called it, “his toy” that was traced to two separate drive-by shootings, all within a mile of Falu-Vives’ home in southeast Colorado Springs, May said.

That’s the home, she said, where he went after killing two people and then went out on the balcony, heard the police sirens and declared to a friend, “Hear that? I like it.”

Not so, countered defense attorney Kent R.P Gray, who asked jurors to consider the other people who admitted they were in the vehicles used in the two separate drive-by shootings.

“Who else is in this picture and who’s the odd man out?” Gray asked the jury. His client is the odd man out, he answered.

Unlike Falu-Vives, three of those people were Sureños gang members. One of those three claimed he had been in a fight at a bar earlier that evening with rival gang members. That man complained that he’d wished he had a gun during the confrontation.

“He was the only one with an ax to grind, Gray said.

Another was a man who brought a shotgun when he heard about his friend.

When police eventually rounded them up, Gray said detectives were more interested in getting them to point a finger at Falu-Vives than in finding out who actually fired the murder weapon.

Falu-Vives is charged in two separate shootings. The first occurred on May 26, 2008, when Capt. Zachary Zsody was standing outside a friend’s house as a gunman in a white vehicle opened fire. The shots hit Zsody in the knee and hip.

Police said the same AK-47 was used on June 6, 2008, when a gunman in a black sport utility vehicle fired on Cesar Ramirez-Ibanez, 20 and Amairany Cervantes, 18, who were killed as they were putting out yard sale signs.

Jurors listened as to a tape of Cervantes’ sister Nataly, who had been sitting in a parked vehicle, as she called 911.

“Somebody shot my Cesar,” she said. “He’s my boyfriend. Please hurry.”

Testimony begins today. If convicted, Falu-Vives faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole.

For more court coverage, go to the Sidebar blog at Gazette.com