People v. David F. Martinez
By JUAN ESPINOSA
The retrial of David Frank Martinez for the June 28, 2024, murder of Elaine DeLeon Munoz Masias began Tuesday, Sept. 30, in Pueblo District Court with opening arguments from prosecution and defense lawyers.
Martinez’s first trial in July of this year ended with the jury deadlocked 7-5 favoring conviction. At that time, District Judge Tim O’Shea declared a mistrial,
The first day of retrial ended early Tuesday afternoon when O’Shea was told one of the jurors was suffering from a migraine headache. O’Shea told lawyers on both sides he would decide whether to dismiss the ailing juror and replace he or she with one of two alternates Wednesday morning. Either way, the trial would proceed.
In his opening statement, prosecutor Kyle McCarthy, recapped the details of the case. Masias died after being shot in the chest at the Veterans Tavern.
“David Martinez on June 28 of last year went to Veterans Tavern to kill his ex-girlfriend Cheryl Rampa,” McCarthy told the jury.
McCarthy, who did not participate in Martinez’s first trial, said that the bullet that killed Masias was one of a dozen shots fired from an alley into the bar. The unseen shooter fled the scene immediately after the shooting. He said the ex-girlfriend who was inside the tavern at the time of the shooting was the intended target.
The prosecutor talked about video evidence from multiple cameras that showed a white Ford pickup truck passing by the tavern and parking at a nearby lot. The truck was registered to Martinez. McCarthy also said the 12 shots fired were proven to have been fired from the same .45-caliber handgun, but not the one found in Martinez’s truck in a search days later.
“That was not the gun used,” McCarthy said of the firearm police confiscated. “The gun used was reported lost or stolen and has not been found.”
In his opening remarks, defense attorney Beau Worthington told the jury they were going to be asked to make a decision with “less than perfect evidence,” perhaps referring to the missing gun.
“David Martinez didn’t know Cheryl Rampa was at the Veterans Tavern,” Worthington said. He also said the missing gun was once owned by a man who was known to misplace things and reported the gun lost or stolen in 2022.
Worthington said prosecutors must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Martinez committed the murder. He told the jurors to “look the government officials in the eye and say ‘you didn’t do it.’”
The first witness called by the prosecution was Michelle DeHerrera, who was at the bar that night to celebrate a friend’s birthday. She testified that she went out to the patio behind the bar to smoke a cigarette. While she was there, two other women, Arla Vigil and Renee Sandoval went outside.
“Carla and Renee turned the patio lights on and a few seconds later, I hear pop, pop, pop,” DeHerrera said. “I thought it was fireworks.”
When Renee was wounded on her finger, the three women realized it was gunfire and “we ran back into the bar trying not to get hit,” DeHerrera said.
DeHerrera initially rendered aid to Sandoval, until her attention was directed to Macias who was lying in a pool of blood between the bar and a pool table. She joined others who were trying to stop the bleeding by applying pressure to the wound.
“I had to leave, I suffered pain in my shoulder,” DeHerrera said. She said because of her previous job, she suffers from PTSD.
Under cross examination, DeHerrera said in her former job, she was an assistant warden for the prison in Crowley County.
Police officer Kasey Hegler, the first police officer at the scene, talked about how she and other officers secured the scene with yellow tape. She saw the onlookers trying to help Macias and because she has had little first aid training allowed them to continue while she began talking to witnesses.
Within five minutes of her arrival, the bar was cordoned off, including the alley where the shots came from, Hegler said.
The last witness for the day was Monique Mulder, a crime scene investigator for the police department. She talked about a camera known as a Faro scanner that “uses thousands laser beams to create a 3D image to measure space” at a crime scene.
Most of her testimony pertained to the alley where the casings were found. The jury was shown Faro-generated 3-D images of the inside of the bar and the fence behind the patio. Mulder said the fence was 71 inches high and Martinez is 67 inches tall. In order for him to shoot over the fence, he would either have needed to have fired with the gun held over his head, or stood on something.
That something may have been a wooden pallet police found leaning against the fence on one side of where the spent casings were found. By using the pallet as a ladder, it may have made it easier to see and shoot over the fence, Mulder said.
The trial will continue Wednesday (Oct. 1) after Judge O’Shea’s ruling on the juror with migraine headaches.