Margarito Leyva pleads guilty to 2015 murder

Richard Byrd/Columbia Basin Herald Margarito Leyva sits in Grant County Superior Court Monday morning.

by Richard Byrd
| April 18, 2017 3:00 AM

EPHRATA — A Moses Lake man who shot and killed a Spokane man over a stolen Seattle Seahawks jersey and music box pleaded guilty to second-degree murder on Monday.

Grant County prosecutors initially charged Margarito Leyva with first-degree murder in connection with the death of 38-year-old Juan Michael Gonzalez Jr. in September 2015, but the charge was lessened in a plea agreement between Deputy Prosecutor Mark Laiminger and defense attorney Robert Kentner.

Laiminger said several key witnesses to the murder were uncooperative with investigators.

“One (witness) has become medically incapacitated and the other has been somewhat avoiding service. It would require material witness warrants to secure their cooperation,” Laiminger explained on Monday. “That combined with how other recent cases have been tried on murder one (first-degree murder) and juries have come back with murder two (second-degree murder).”

The prosecutor noted that a few recent cases that were initially tried for first-degree murder and resulted in a second-degree murder conviction involved multiple gunshots and stab wounds. The Leyva matter, on the other hand, involved a single gunshot, which Laiminger believes would have made it difficult to obtain a first-degree degree murder conviction if the case were to proceed to trial. The charge carries with it a standard sentencing range of 14.5 to nearly 23 years of confinement. A May 2 date was set for Leyva’s sentencing.

In the evening hours of Sept. 4, 2015 deputies with the Grant County Sheriff’s Office responded to Samaritan Hospital in Moses Lake after a man, Gonzalez, was brought into the emergency room by a friend. Deputies later learned Gonzalez was shot during an altercation with Leyva at the College Apartments in Moses Lake on Grape Drive.

The man who transported Gonzalez to the hospital told deputies earlier in the night he had given Leyva and his girlfriend, identified as Reva Ann Marie Hindman, of Moses Lake, a ride to the College Apartments. About 20 minutes after Leyva and Hindman arrived, numerous people came out of the apartment Leyva and Hindman went into and were screaming that someone had been shot.

The man whose apartment the shooting took place in told deputies he was at his residence with some friends and Leyva and Hindman showed up. He said Leyva was upset with Gonzalez because Gonzalez had stolen a Seattle Seahawks jersey and a music box from another man and he was there to collect the items.

Leyva and Gonzalez got into a brief pushing match and at some point Leyva pulled out a gun. Gonzalez allegedly told Leyva if he was going to pull a gun on him he should be “man enough to pull the trigger too.” It was then that Leyva lowered the weapon down from Gonzalez’s face and shot him in the stomach. Gonzalez passed away the next morning at Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane.

Deputies and a team of U.S. Marshals arrested Leyva and Hindman a couple of days later at a motel in Pasco.