Verdict reached in AR-15 shooting at crowded Pasco nightclub
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Jury rejects self-defense; Eduardo Miranda-Salazar and Jesus Martinez-Lopez convicted.
- Shooters fired about 26 rounds into La Cantina; Cesar Ponce-Gutierrez and others wounded.
- Prosecutors say defendants escalated the confrontation by fetching guns; sentencing pending.
A Franklin County jury has found that two men who shot up a Pasco nightclub did not act in self-defense, but they also didn’t intend to kill someone.
Together, the men fired dozens of rounds, including from an AR-15, into a crowded bar in May 2024. One man suffered 10 gunshot wounds and another was also injured.
Jurors deliberated for about 6 1/2 hours last week before finding Eduardo Miranda-Salazar, 34, guilty of two counts of first-degree assault and one count of illegally possessing a firearm.
His co-defendant Jesus Martinez-Lopez, 27, was found guilty of seven counts of first-degree assault and one count of unlawfully displaying a gun.
They are to be sentenced at a special hearing that has yet to be set.
The verdict followed an 11-day trial where prosecutors said the men were drunk and in a bad mood when they came into the La Cantina bar on Court Street in Pasco.
Pasco nightclub shooting
Prosecutors argued the men were causing problems by harassing staff and making other customers feel uncomfortable that night.
At some point, Miranda-Salazar told a security guard he was going to “come back and f--k everything up,” prosecutors said.
A half-hour before the shooting, Miranda-Salazar was seen on the club’s security video moving his car. That’s when investigators say he likely grabbed his handgun and returned to the club.
After he was told to leave, Miranda-Salazar tossed his keys to Martinez Lopez, who went to the car and came back with an AR-15.
“He is concealing that rifle behind his back after he gets it. He is not carrying it on his head. He’s not slinging it over his shoulder to get his mail. He’s not showing it to the group. It’s not show and tell. It’s not, ‘Hey, you want to buy this rifle,’” Deputy Prosecutor Maureen Astley said during her closing arguments. “He’s concealing it because of his negative intentions.”
One of the club’s security team members testified he told another security employee to call 911 because he believed the men were going to kill everyone inside.
Miranda-Salazar and Martinez Lopez were still outside when a third man, Cesar Ponce-Gutierrez, came out of the bar, saw the gun and was worried what was about to happen.
He retrieved his own gun from his car and approached them.
A video taken through the front window caught what happened next. Miranda-Salazar pulled out his gun and held it to the back of Ponce-Gutierrez’s head.
“He felt a firearm pressed against the back of his head and he had to make a split-second decision,” Astley told jurors. “In doing so, he fired his weapon at around the same time as Mr. Miranda-Salazar.”
Astley said the two men started firing at about the same time during the struggle.
As Ponce-Gutierrez retreated into the bar, Martinez Lopez fired through the window. Several of the shots hit Ponce-Gutierrez in the arms, legs and stomach. He collapsed on the floor near his friends.
Miranda-Salazar and Martinez Lopez fled but were later arrested.
While Ponce-Gutierrez survived, he could have died if it wasn’t for a fast response from one of his friends and others, Astley told jurors. Though he lived, the shooting left him with injuries that make it hard for him to hold a job even a year later, she said.
Another man, Pablo Hernandez, also was hit in the arm and stomach.
“These two men (Miranda-Salazar and Martinez Lopez) are asking to be excused from a situation they created,” Astley said. “They created this situation for the mere fact that if those keys had never been tossed from one to the other and that rifle had never come into that situation, Cesar would never had any cause for alarm.”
“From the state’s perspective, Mr. Ponce-Gutierrez steps out of that bar, and he saw a threat,” Astley told the jurors. “He addressed that threat, probably not in the best way.”
Self-defense
But defense attorneys Dennis Hanson and Peyman Younesi argued Ponce-Gutierrez stepped in and threatened the men.
The attorneys painted Ponce-Gutierrez as the person who turned what was a calm situation into a fracas. They said Ponce-Gutierrez was the first to point his gun at anyone.
Hanson also noted that Ponce-Gutierrez had a blood-alcohol level of 0.19% and had cocaine and fentanyl in his system when he arrived at the hospital.
“Put yourself in (Martinez Lopez’s) shoes on May 18, 2024, when Cesar approaches him with a pistol drawn, shoots Eduardo, fires seven times. What is a reasonable response?” Hanson asked the jurors.