A man who opened fire on a car full of children in Indio, mistakenly hitting a 14-year-old girl in the head, was convicted this week of attempted murder, prosecutors say.
The girl, who survived after surgery, is now in her 20s and has no memory of the 2018 shooting.
The shooter, Vicente Manuel Reyes, who was on parole for an earlier violent crime, was 22 at the time of the shooting. He’s now 30 and will be sentenced at a later date.
“There was an intent to kill here,” Deputy District Attorney Kevin Roeder told jurors in his closing statement. “The victim, Ashley, was 14 at the time. She did not do anything wrong.”
According to the prosecutor, Ashley was in the line of fire because the defendant was targeting the person near her in a sedan passing by his cousin’s house on the night of May 20, 2018.
Roeder recalled the testimony of a man named Lenny, who had attended school with Reyes and became, for reasons not specified in court, an object of the defendant’s scorn.
Lenny later told Indio Police Department detectives that he was “the intended target” that night as he sat near Ashley, according to the prosecution.
Along with Ashley and Lenny, who was then in his late teens, a 15-year-old boy, a 13-year-old girl and a 5-year-old girl, whose identities weren’t provided, were also in the vehicle, according to police.
Investigators alleged Reyes fired on the vehicle as it traveled through the area of John Nobles Avenue and Monroe Street. Reyes was in the neighborhood visiting his cousin’s residence at the time, according to testimony.
Roeder alleged the defendant fired two shots from his handgun through the rear window of the car, striking Ashley in the head. The bullet went through her jaw and knocked out a tooth. The second bullet nearly struck one of the other people in the car, according to the prosecution.
“When he shot at the car, he did it wilfully,” Roeder said, adding that Reyes fled immediately afterward.
Defense attorney John Dolan said all eyewitness testimony was unreliable. He told jurors in his closing argument that one of the witnesses answered “I don’t know” 75 times while on the stand, raising doubts about their credibility.
“This case is all chaos,” Dolan said, pointing to what he characterized as confusing details presented by the prosecution. “There’s no doubt my client went to his cousin’s house, and then he fled to go home when there were shots heard in the area. The question is whether he was the shooter.”
The attorney said witnesses couldn’t even be certain about the type of clothing the gunman was wearing.
Lacking definitive proof Reyes was the one with the gun left jurors only one way to decide — not guilty, according to Dolan. After evidence and closing arguments were presented, the jury in Indio began its deliberations Wednesday, May 13, and continued them all day the next day and part of Monday, May 18, before reaching a verdict.
Court records show that in 2012, Reyes and two other juveniles stabbed a boy in the parking lot of an Indio movie theater. Reyes was prosecuted as an adult and pleaded guilty to felony assault a year later.
He was sentenced to five years in state prison but was paroled in summer 2017, according to court documents. The shooting happened less than a year later.
Desert Sun staff contributed to this report.
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Man who shot 14-year-old girl in the head in Indio convicted
Reporting by City News Service / Palm Springs Desert Sun
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