Friends tell jurors about finding discarded gun along Interstate 82 (with videos)

A Zillah woman had no difficulty Thursday telling jurors the exact spot on Interstate 82 where she found the pistol that may have been used in a Christmas Eve fatal shooting.

Shelby Barrett faced an enlarged map and quickly pointed to Milepost 92, west of Yakitat Road outside Benton City.

Barrett explained that she had been traveling from Sunnyside to the Tri-Cities in late December when she decided to show a friend, Ricardo Orea, where she’d been in a car wreck.

“It was three years prior, and during that car accident I should have been killed, so it was a very memorable moment,” she testified in the murder trial of Francisco J. Munoz Quintero.

The two friends were walking on the shoulder — about 10 to 15 yards off the highway — looking for the barbed wire fence that Barrett’s vehicle had previously rolled through, when Orea came upon the discarded 9mm pistol.

“We didn’t think much of it, so we had just put it in my vehicle and continued looking for the site of my wreck,” said Barrett, a student at Central Washington University in Ellensburg.

The gun stayed in her vehicle all day as the two ran errands. Then, while visiting another friend in rural Benton County between Benton City and Prosser, they took it out and left the gun at that home.

It wasn’t until later on New Year’s Eve, when Barrett saw a news report on Facebook that Kennewick police were looking along the highway for a gun, that she realized they may have evidence in a homicide investigation.

Orea called police, and he and Barrett met with officers to hand over the gun and give details about their discovery.

Defense attorney Scott Johnson questioned why Barrett didn’t call police immediately.

“I just didn’t think of it,” she said. “It’s not every day that this happens.”

Barrett later added that if she had the same experience today, “I’m going to call the cops first.”

Orea told jurors the pistol that had a bullet in the chamber and two rounds missing.

Munoz Quintero, 20, told investigators on Dec. 25 that after he shot Luisa A. Garcia Farias in Kennewick, he drove back to Mabton and threw the pistol and his cellphone out of the car along I-82 near Prosser.

Munoz Quintero is on trial in Benton County Superior Court for the Christmas Eve death of his former girlfriend.

He is charged with second-degree murder with a gun, with the aggravating circumstances of domestic violence and that the crime had a destructive and foreseeable impact on others.

Garcia Farias had agreed to give her ex a ride into Kennewick that night when she picked up her 22-month-old daughter after work.

Munoz reportedly told detectives that he waited until they were near his destination, then asked the 21-year-old mother if she would get back together with him. She declined his request.

He claims that the two got into a verbal argument, he pulled out his pistol and Garcia Farias grabbed it, causing the gun to fire twice.

Munoz Quintero then allegedly left his wounded ex in the middle of Tweedt Street and took off in her car, with their toddler still in the backseat. He turned himself in about 19 hours later.

The defense has said Munoz Quintero’s actions that night may have been reckless, but they were not intentional.

Several witnesses on Thursday identified the pistol that was found on the highway, but testimony has not yet connected it to the fatal shooting.

Kennewick Paramedic Daniel Tate testified that first responders initially did not know why Garcia Farias had gone into cardiac arrest, so he felt it best to get her to Trios Southridge Hospital quickly.

It was while they were preparing to get Garcia Farias onto a gurney that someone noticed a gunshot wound on her right side, and then an exit wound on her left side. He noted that it had been very dark at the scene until more officers arrived with flashlights to illuminate the patient.

Also Thursday, Judge Jackie Shea Brown denied a defense motion for a mistrial.

The request came after Benton County Corrections Officer Brian Newton mentioned that when he booked Munoz Quintero into the jail on Dec. 25, he noticed two juvenile warrants in the nationwide database.

Defense attorney Alexandria Sheridan objected because jurors typically are not told about a defendant’s criminal history.

Shea Brown had the jury removed from the courtroom while she listened to arguments, then ruled that Newton’s remarks have not “tainted the entire trial to the extent that it denies (Munoz Quintero) a fair trial.”

She instructed the jury to ignore that testimony.

The trial continues today in Courtroom B at the Benton County Justice Center.

This story was originally published May 19, 2016 at 6:18 PM with the headline "Friends tell jurors about finding discarded gun along Interstate 82 (with videos)."