Gang member gets life sentence in 2015 Salinas murder
A Norteno gang member was given a sentence of 50 years to life for the 2015 killing of a 22-year-old man from Mexico who was visiting family in Salinas.
Bay City News Service
SALINAS — A Norteno gang member was given a sentence of 50 years to life for the 2015 killing of a 22-year-old man from Mexico who was visiting family in Salinas.
The sentenced man, Charles “Trigger” Gutierrez, had been convicted in May 2018 by a jury of “murder in the first degree for the benefit of the Norteno Criminal Street Gang, Salinas East Market, with an enhancement for personal use of a firearm,” according to the office of Monterey
County District Attorney Jeannine Pacioni.
Gutierrez received an additional four years as the perpetrator of a December 2017 attack on an inmate at the Monterey County Jail.
The sentence was made in the Aug. 7, 2015 shooting of Eliot Jair Serna of Mexico, who was visiting his aunt and other family at the Rancho Salinas apartment in Salinas.
Serna and two cousins were in his aunt’s Honda on their way to get tacos when they passed some men outside what prosecutors called “a known Norteno home within the complex” that belonged to Gutierrez’s family.
“The men, many of whom were active Norteno gang members, and many of whom were the defendant’s family members, were celebrating the life of a fellow gang member who had been murdered,” the district attorney’s office said in a news release.
Gutierrez and other armed men approached the Honda and questioned Serna and his cousins about their gang affiliation, according to prosecutors. Gutierrez fired at least three shots into the car and one struck Serna’s arm and torso.
The driver of the Honda sped to a hospital, where Serna was pronounced dead.
Members of Serna’s family came from Mexico to hear the sentencing.
The four-year addition to the sentence for Gutierrez resulted from a prolonged “vicious attack” he and other inmates in the Monterey County Jail gang housing unit carried out in December 2017 on an inmate housed on an upper floor.