Man guilty in 1998 double homicide

Victim’s granddaughter ‘here to watch justice’

Katherine Bockhorst sat quietly in the corner of a

Las Vegas courtroom as her grandmother’s killer was convicted of murder Wednesday — 21 years after a double homicide at an assisted living facility.

“I needed to be here to watch justice come through,” she said. “It can’t bring her back, but there’s closure to this piece of it.”

Prosecutors said Gustavo

Ramos-martinez was 18 in May 1998 when he fatally stabbed and raped 86-yearold Helen Sabraw before bludgeoning 75-year-old Wallace Siegel to death with a dumbbell in separate apartments at an assisted-living community near Flamingo Road and Maryland Parkway.

Bockhorst and her husband, Steven, watched six days of testimony and arguments in Ramos-martinez’s bench trial, in which District Judge Douglas Herndon weighed the evidence rather than a jury.

The judge found Ramos-martinez guilty of two counts of first-degree

at a rate 10 times that of white children, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“The most important things that can be done are raising awareness of the increased risk and making swimming pools more available,” Mcallister said.

Most pool drownings occur when the child is not expected to be there, he said. He added that it is important that pools be secured with fences at least 4 feet tall to prevent children from falling in when unsupervised. In both pools

and larger bodies of water, children should not use “floaties” because they can be unreliable, Mcallister said.

Lake Mead National Recreation Area spokeswoman Christie Vanover emphasized that children and adults should wear U.S. Coast Guard-certified life jackets when in the lake and not rely on pool flotation devices that can blow away in the wind.

Vanover said holiday weekends usually bring 100,000 to 150,000 visitors to the lake, increasing safety risks. Lake Mead was rated America’s deadliest national park in 2017, but Vanover said there have been no drownings at the lake this year.

In emergency situations, American Red Cross of Nevada and Utah regions spokesman Rich Woodruff said, residents should call 911, but he said it is important to learn how to perform hands -only CPR. Pumping the heart can keep blood circulating until emergency responders arrive, he said.

“We always tell parents to ‘waterproof your kids,’” Woodruff said. “Get them trained on how to swim safely but also get them to be vigilant about the risks.”

Contact Amanda Bradford at abradford@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0279. Follow @amandabrad_uc on Twitter.