She heard screams, then the shooting started. Driver testifies at Kennewick murder trial
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- Aubreyanna Asselin testified she heard screaming, then felt glass shards hit her arms.
- More than 70 rounds were fired at the Jeep she had received as a gift earlier that year.
- Eighteen-year-old Jatzivy Sarabia was killed and friends injured in the ambush.
The first warning a driver had before gunshots shattered her windshield were the screams
“I heard screaming to get down, and then I felt glass shards hit my arms, and then I started hearing gunshots,” Aubreyanna Asselin told jurors as she fought back tears. “At first, I didn’t know they were gunshots.”
More than 70 rounds were fired at the Jeep she’d received as a gift earlier that year. One of the shots broke her windshield and hit her friend, Jatzivy Sarabia, who was riding in the backseat.
Sarabia, 18, was killed, and her friends suffered minor injuries, when their Jeep was shot at by four teens in two other cars in an ambush-style attack near downtown Kennewick in October 2022.
Asselin, her passenger Jasmine Lomeli and Maya Williams, the driver of another car, took the stand earlier this week in the aggravated first-degree murder trial of Marcell A. E. Cola, 24, of Spokane.
The murder trial is entering its fifth week of testimony as prosecutors near the end of their case.
All three women on Wednesday gave similar accounts for what they saw on Oct. 14 and 15, 2022, and recounting their heavy drinking those days, occasionally to almost passing out
Asselin said she’s known Isaiah S. R. Combs, 23, who is also charged in the shooting, since middle school in Spokane. She and three friends drove to Spokane on Oct. 14, where they spent time with Cola and others.
They were all in a Spokane parking lot when Lomeli spoke a “normal, usual word” that Combs took as a slight, and he screamed at her. The word is considered a derogatory gang term, according to investigators.
In an earlier hearing for another suspect, investigators said one of the women needed to use the bathroom and asked for a napkin.
“The use (of the) word ‘napkin’ set Combs off as it was apparently an offensive word towards his gang,” Judge Rodriguez wrote in a decision at the time, referring to testimony from a Benton County deputy.
Asselin of Kennewick testified she stepped into the middle of the dispute because she had taken her friend to Spokane. Combs then turned his rage on her, she said. She described him as “foaming out at the mouth.”
“I proceed to get out of my vehicle because he’s yelling directly in my face,” she testified. “Then he pushes me and I push him back, and then he put a gun to my head.”
Combs was only about 2 feet away from her when he drew the gun and aimed it at her, she said.
She fought through tears on the stand as she described how the threat left her upset and shaken. Judge Norma Rodriguez took a short recess in the trial before Asselin could continue her emotional testimony.
Downtown Kennewick shooting
Asselin said she wasn’t prepared the next day to cross paths again with Combs in the Tri-Cities.
A woman she was with had told Maya Williams that they were going to the 3-Cities Sports Bar on Columbia Drive in Kennewick on Oct. 15.
After an initial tense conversation with Combs and some others from Spokane, they seemed to make peace and even agreed to go to a party.
But Williams testified that Combs and the others were forced out of the party because they were armed.
Williams said she left for a short time, when she returned she found the group at a nearby intersection.
The men who were standing about 5 feet from the car, when Williams heard one of the men from Spokane say, “It’s bad for the females.”
Williams added under cross-examination that a white SUV drove past twice from the nearby party and driver was staring menacingly at them.
They then went to the intersection of Chemical Drive and East Third Avenue near downtown Kennewick, where they crossed paths with the women in the Jeep.
Williams’ Honda and the silver Kia were parked next to each other, talking about what to do next. That’s when she heard Cola yell, “Go. Go. Go.”
She sped down Chemical Drive and the shooting started. She told jurors that she didn’t see anyone from the silver car shooting nor see the Jeep that was being shot at.
None of the women who testified mentioned seeing Cola shooting.
Asselin testified that she didn’t know her friend, Sarabia, was wounded until she managed to elude the other cars and park.
“I started blaring my horn and pounding on doors and screaming to call the cops,” she said as she cried on the stand. “Then the neighbors came up, and we were telling them to call the police.”
Officers arrived within minutes but weren’t able to save Sarabia’s life.
She had just graduated from Hanford High school in June 2022 and planned to attend Columbia Basin before she was killed.
This story was originally published April 10, 2026 at 12:13 PM.