California man on trial for 2011 home invasion, robbery of Kennewick jewelry store

A California man on trial for the 2011 home invasion and kidnapping of a Kennewick jeweler’s family said Thursday that investigators made a mistake.

Vicente Guizar Figueroa, 21, denied knowing anything about a plan five years ago to hold the family of Mark Welsh hostage while the robbers took the Touchstone Jewelers owner to his store so they could steal $500,000 in merchandise.

Figueroa testified that he’s only been to the Tri-Cities twice in his life, while visiting his mother in Yakima County. Those occasions were just to go to the mall, he said.

He explained the only way writing paper with his fingerprints could have been found in the victim’s car is if someone had taken them out of the school binder in his backpack at his mother’s house.

It is those fingerprints that broke open the unsolved case. They were linked to a suspect in a nearly identical crime four months later outside Bakersfield, Calif.

Figueroa and his older brother, Humberto Guizar-Figueroa, 29, are serving almost 30 years in prison for admitting they entered a California home and held a husband, wife and daughter at gunpoint, with plans to take the husband to his pawn shop to steal gold and other valuables.

A third man, who has only been identified as “Alex,” has never been found.

Now, Figueroa faces nine felony counts in Benton County Superior Court for the Kennewick crime.

He would have been 15 when Welsh’s family was terrorized by masked gunmen on Feb. 9, 2011.

Figueroa is charged with first-degree robbery, theft of a motor vehicle, two counts of first-degree burglary and five counts of first-degree kidnapping.

The burglary and robbery charges, and one of the kidnapping counts, include the allegation that he was armed with a pistol.

His trial started Monday.

Asked about his reaction upon learning of the Benton County case, Figueroa replied: “At first I thought they made a mistake. And that’s why I told them I wanted to come over here and face these charges, because I hadn’t done anything wrong.”

The case went to the jury late Thursday. The panel recessed for the night and will resume deliberations July 22.

Figueroa’s first name is spelled “Vincente” in court documents and on jail records, but he spelled it “Vicente” when he took the stand.

He has been held without bail in the Benton County jail since last August.

Before his transfer to Washington state, he was serving his sentence for the June 6, 2011, assault case in Calipatria State Prison, according to California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation records. That prison is east of San Diego.

His brother reportedly has been sent to a private prison in Arizona because of overcrowding in the California system. He has not been charged as a co-defendant in the Kennewick case.

Deputy Prosecutor Terry Bloor asked Vicente Figueroa to provide more information on Alex, presumably so investigators can look at him for the Welsh kidnapping.

“If I could, sir, I would. Trust me,” Figueroa testified. “I wouldn’t be in this situation otherwise.”

One of Welsh’s daughters was home with her son when two men came to the front door at 5:15 p.m. The men wore orange vests and white hard hats, claimed they were with “PGNE” power company — the real company’s name, based in California, is PG&E — and asked to come inside to check some things.

They were told to come back later, but pushed their way inside and pulled out guns while donning face masks, prosecutors said. One of the men told the daughter they wanted merchandise from her father’s jewelry store.

Her mother and sister came home an hour later, followed by her father. Mark Welsh found his family seated on the living room couch and had a gun stuck in his face by one of their abductors, prosecutors said.

Once a third man arrived at the home, the first two took Welsh to the store on Clearwater Avenue in Marineland Village. He was ordered to disarm the alarm, turn off the interior lights and open the safe.

The robbers took the entire jewelry inventory.

Then, back at the house, the men tied up the family, confiscated their cellphones, cut the home phone lines and took the keys to Welsh’s 2004 Chevrolet Silverado. They ordered the Welsh family to wait 30 minutes before calling police and claimed they would be watching.

Welsh ran to a neighbor’s house for help.

The Silverado was found abandoned and a clipboard with paper was left inside.

Welsh and his sister, Sharon McAlmond, owned Touchstone Jewelers. They both retired earlier this year.

Courtney Paduch, a forensic scientist with the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab, testified that she processed three pieces of paper and found a total of 22 impressions. She searched the national fingerprint image system and identified the prints as belonging to Figueroa.

Figueroa told jurors that after visiting his mother in late spring 2011, his brother drove him back to Modesto, Calif., in his mother’s Cadillac Escalade. However, instead of stopping, his brother agreed to go farther south to Bakersfield for their passenger Alex.

They watched a Bakersfield pawn shop for several days and even went inside to purchase items, before following owner Donald Younger home one night.

Figueroa said Younger’s front door was unlocked, and he and his brother went inside to take the family hostage. They didn’t know an older couple had fled the house out a back bedroom and called authorities.

Figueroa said it was chaos, with everybody yelling and dogs barking. They told Younger they wanted to go to his pawn shop, but the owner told his abductors he would not be able to get into the safe because it was on a time lock and wouldn’t open until the next morning.

“I told them they were going to have to kill me, because my wife had cancer and she was in the final stages of it,” Younger testified Thursday. “I was hoping this was going to scare the cancer out of her, but she died eight months later.”

Kern County sheriff’s deputies responded to the home, along with a SWAT team, and eventually the family got out safely as the brothers were arrested in the backyard.

This story was originally published July 21, 2016 at 7:41 PM with the headline "California man on trial for 2011 home invasion, robbery of Kennewick jewelry store."