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The alleged getaway driver in a 2012 fatal shooting at a Salt Lake City smoke shop testified on Thursday that he regrets not telling police he had watched as his friend walked into the store with a rifle and open fire, leaving a 26-year-old clerk dead.
"I regret everything," Vladimir Suarez-Campos said through a 3rd District Court interpreter. "I regret that I didn't tell the police … I regret that I was so stupid."
Shackled and wearing orange Summit County Jail togs, the 40-year-old man said he had willingly gone with Yelfris Sosa-Hurtado to the store because he had been told that three men had beaten him up and he wanted to settle the score with a fist fight.
"He never told me that he had a weapon and he never said anything about shooting," Suarez-Campos said on the fourth day of a week-long murder trial for Sosa-Hurtado.
A 28-year-old former University of Utah student, Sosa-Hurtado has pleaded not guilty to one count of first-degree felony aggravated murder and nine counts of third-degree felony discharge of a weapon in connection with the March 14, 2012, shooting death of Stephen Guadalupe Chavez inside CJ's Smoke Shop.
Sosa-Hurtado — who has sat impassively through the trial so far, revealing no emotion — is expected to testify in his own defense on Friday.
Suarez-Campos, faces his own, separate murder charge in connection with the shooting, but in exchange for his testimony, Salt Lake County prosecutors have negotiated a plea agreement that would see him plead to a lesser charge.
"Three felonies and a long probation," Suarez-Campos told the jury of six men and four women when asked to explain his understanding of the deal.
Suarez-Campos will plead guilty to a second-degree felony count of manslaughter and felony-level counts of obstructing justice and felony discharge of a firearm, his defense attorney Adam Crayk told The Salt Lake Tribune outside the courtroom. Terms of his punishment — including a years-long probation period — are still being negotiated and will depend in part on whether Suarez-Campos truthfully testifies Thursday, Crayk said.
Had he gone to trial and been convicted of murder, Suarez could have spent as much as 25 years in prison.
On cross-examination, attorneys for Sosa-Hurtado, tried to suggest that jurors can't trust Suarez-Campos' testimony because he is telling jurors a far different story than he told police back in 2012.
"You have admitted to the jury that you are a liar," Ralph Dellapiana said during cross-examination.
"I didn't give you a full story when I should have," Suarez-Campos agreed.
Over more than three hours of testimony, Suarez-Campos also testified to watching as his friend walked into the store and fired, first in front of him and then to his left. Although police had pegged him as Sosa-Hurtado's getaway driver, on Thursday Suarez-Campos said he fled the store on foot once the shooting started.
He also said he later drove to Sosa-Hurtado's house to confront his friend about his actions.
"I asked him why the hell did you fire? Why the hell have you done this and why the hell did you trick me?" Suarez-Campos said.
Sosa-Hurtado downplayed the incident saying he had only injured a man in the store. Later, Suarez-Campos saw on the television news that Chavez had died. The two men and their wives went to Las Vegas the next day. At a rest stop Sosa-Hurtado said he was not sorry for what happened, according to Suarez-Campos.
Months later in a courthouse holding cell, Suarez-Campos said he asked Sosa-Hurtado about the gun and was told that it would never be found because it had been dropped into the mud from a bridge. Sosa-Hurtado asked his friend not to testify against him at trial, and said he wanted Suarez-Campos to shoot Stephen Chavez's father in the head because he was the only person who could identify the person who had killed his son.
Suarez-Campos also told jurors that he had kept quiet in the past, in part because Sosa-Hurtado had said he appreciated the other man's silence and that he intended to take responsibility for the shooting.
Suarez-Campos said he had attempted to tell a defense attorney previously assigned to his case what he knew about the shooting, but the effort failed.
"I don't know if he wouldn't listen, or if he didn't understand me," he said.