Jury gets case of soldier accused in double homicide

Jomar Falu-Vives’ AK-47 was the weapon used to kill two people as they were hanging yard sale signs, his defense attorneys conceded Tuesday.

They said it was his Chevrolet Tahoe that was used in the drive-by shooting on June 6, 2008, that left Amairany “Mayra” Cervantes, 18, and Cesar Ramirez-Ibanez, 20, shot to death on Monterey Road near Carmel Drive.

But it wasn’t the 25-year-old Fort Carson soldier who pulled the trigger that night, defense attorney Ernest Marquez said during closing arguments to a three-week long trial.

In fact, Marquez argued, if Falu-Vives was sitting in the driver’s seat as prosecutors claim, he could not have taken the shot.

“Somebody did,” Marquez said, adding that “somebody” was Alonso “Turtle” Hernandez, a former Army medic who had been sitting in the front passenger seat that night.

That’s a myth, prosecutors countered. They argued Falu-Vives was the gunman in that shooting as well as in another drive-by on May 26, 2008, that left Army Lt. Zachary A. Szody with a shattered leg.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Diana K. May said Falu-Vives fired all the high velocity shots from his assault rifle and did so without any regard for human life.

“Your bullets are going to fly so hard, Mr. Vives, that they’re going to strike a house a block away,” May said, glancing at the defendant.

May reminded the jury that four people who were in the drive-by vehicles with Falu-Vives identified him as the person who pulled the trigger on a gun that he didn’t share with others.

She again showed a video clip of Falu-Vives firing his gun at a target range.

“Look at how casual ,... how easy it is for him to shoot,” she said. “This is a trained soldier who knows how to fire.”

May said Szody and Sgt. William Jacobs were standing on a street corner when the defendant opened fire, hitting Szody and missing Jacobs.

“They were two soldiers who had just returned from Iraq,” she said. “They didn’t know they were going to be fired upon by another soldier in the United States.”

Marquez countered that Falu-Vives was a good soldier.

 “Ms. May kept glancing over at Jomar Falu-Vives wanting you to look,” Marquez said, standing behind the defendant and placing his hands on Falu-Vives’ shoulders.

“I’ve had the honor to be here with this man,” Marquez added.

A jury of eight women and four men will begin deliberating the case Wednesday morning.

Falu-Vives served in Baghdad with the 2nd Battalion of the 12th Infantry Regiment during the 2007 offensive to reclaim the city from insurgents. Three other former soldiers from the battalion, Louis Bressler, Kenneth Eastridge and Bruce Bastien Jr., were convicted in a series of crimes including the deaths of two Fort Carson soldiers and are serving long prison sentences.

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