The King County Superior Court sentenced a 32-year-old Auburn man on murder and assault charges for a 2017 shooting that killed a man at a Kent gas station.
The sentencing arrives following a four-year search for the suspect after he fled to Mexico, and more than two years of court negotiations.
Ricardo Martinez-Perez pleaded guilty to charges of murder in the second degree and assault in the first degree in December 2023 for a shooting at a gas station in Kent that killed Roberto Matamoros Izaguirre and injured another.
Judge Josephine Wiggs sentenced Martinez-Perez to 26 and a half years in prison at his sentencing hearing on Jan. 12.
According to court documents, Martinez-Perez opened fire, firing four rounds with a 7.62 caliber rifle in an alley behind a gas station on 1500 West Meeker Street just after midnight on April 18, 2017.
His target, Izaguirre, suffered a single gunshot wound that passed through his neck, killing him at the scene.
Law enforcement discovered a second victim at the scene bleeding from a gunshot wound to the neck.
Following the shooting, Martinez-Perez fled to Oklahoma to family in the state, arriving at his relatives’ house on April 21, 2017, according to an affidavit of probable cause. Two days after arriving in Oklahoma, Martinez-Perez’s relatives dropped him off in a parking lot in Irving, Texas.
After, he fled to Mexico, reaching extended family, according to court documents.
According to charging documents, at the time of the shooting on April 18, 2017, Martinez-Perez held a federal probation warrant, with U.S. Marshals actively seeking for his arrest.
Mexican law enforcement arrested Martinez-Perez in May 2020 in Aguascalientes for local law violations, including resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer. Mexican law enforcement deported him to the United States, and U.S. Marshals assumed custody of him on his federal warrant, with a federal district court judge imposing a term of confinement to last until April 20, 2021.
King County prosecutors charged Martinez-Perez on April 12, 2021, with murder in the second degree with a firearm enhancement, assault in the first degree with a firearm enhancement, and unlawful possession of a firearm in the second degree nearing the end of the federally imposed term of confinement.
The court dismissed the charge of unlawful possession of a firearm in the second degree and the firearm enhancements on his assault and murder charges at his Jan. 12 sentencing hearing as per recommendation by prosecutors in his plea deal.
According to court documents, Martinez-Perez negotiated in his plea deal for a mid-range sentence of 225 months for murder in the second degree and low-end sentence of 93 months for his assault in the first degree charge.
The court ordered for an additional six years of parole following his sentence.
Martinez-Perez will serve his sentence in the custody of the Washington State Department of Corrections with credit for time served.
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