A King County Superior Court jury convicted a Lakewood man on Thursday on three counts of first-degree murder for the shooting deaths of three men found in 2011 at a nursery plant in unincorporated Kent.
Alberto Avila-Cardenas, 40, faces a sentence range of 75 to 95 years for killing Jesus Bejar-Avila, 25, Yazmani Quezada-Ortiz, 26, and Cristian Alberto Rangel, 19, according to the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. A sentencing date has yet to be set.
The bodies of the three men were found March 10, 2011 by an employee of Rainier Nursery near the West Valley Highway, in the 26200 block of 65th Avenue South. The three men had been shot in the head and then buried.
The motive for the killings appeared to be connected with a shooting in Lakewood that resulted in the death of two people and a foot injury to Avila-Cardenas, according to charging papers. It is believed that a cousin of Quezada-Ortiz may have been the shooter in the incident.
King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg said the case was solved as a result of the hard work and persistence by detectives with the Lakewood Police Department and the King County Sheriff’s Office.
“The Lakewood Police Department put extraordinary effort into this case when it was just a missing persons report, and the Sheriff’s Office was able to use that work to swiftly build a case against the defendant once the victims’ bodies were found,” Satterberg said. “I also want to thank the prosecution team for all their hard work in bringing this case to trial.”
A co-defendant in the case, Jose Alfredo Velez-Fombona, 29, pled guilty last month to a charge of second-degree murder and faces a sentence range of 10 to 18 years in prison. He’s scheduled for sentencing on Aug. 28 before Judge Bruce Heller at the Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent.
Cellphone records of Avila-Cardenas and Velez-Fombona show the two men traveled Dec. 12, 2010 to the Lake Union florist shop in Seattle where Avila-Bejar, Quezada-Ortiz and Rangel worked. They waited until the men got off work at about 3 p.m.
Cellphone records indicate Avila-Cardenas and Velez-Fombona traveled south, likely on Interstate 5, at around 3:30 p.m. The same records show the men arrived at about 4 p.m. in the area of the Rainier Nursery, and then leaving the area about 5:50 p.m. The records then show Avila-Cardenas and Velez-Fombona in the area of Velez-Fombona’s Kent residence on the West Hill, just a few miles from the nursery.
Detectives served a search warrant on the residence of Velez-Fombona. They found the cellphone used in the Dec. 12 calls as well as a goldish-colored GMC Yukon bearing Oregon plates, expected to be the same vehicle a witness saw when at least two men picked up Avila-Cardenas Dec. 12 at his Lakewood home.
Detective Christopher Johnson of the King County Sheriff’s Office investigated the case. The prosecution team included Senior Deputy Prosecutors Mary Barbosa and Kristin Richardson, and paralegal Sue Trujillo and victim advocate Karen Kunde.
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