Dad allegedly planned deadly confrontation
He's accused of killing man as revenge after teen daughter died after driving with man's son
The Vancouver, Washington, resident accused of coming to the Bay Area to confront and kill the father of his deceased daughter's boyfriend brought with him zip ties and rope and told the victim, “You're coming with me” moments before the fatal shooting, according to new police testimony.
Louie Sixto Lopez, 53, is charged with murdering 40-yearold Reynaldo Cantu in a revenge plot sparked by rage over Lopez blaming Cantu's son for the gruesome death of Lopez's daughter on a San Jose freeway. At Lopez's recent preliminary hearing, the defense insisted he traveled to the Cantus' home simply looking for answers to the tragedy, but that a deadly confrontation somehow ensued.
But police testimony painted a picture of a chilling plot that involved not just Lopez allegedly shooting Cantu outside the family's home on the 7600 block of Sunset Avenue of Newark but also driving by the area days earlier to case the place. Lopez allegedly held an orange clipboard as he approached the house, later telling a police interrogator he hoped members of the Cantu family would assume he was a city worker and let him approach.
“He stalks the victim over the course of several days. We have evidence that he drove by the house two days prior,” Deputy District Attorney Ted McGarver said at the hearing. “He's trying to disguise himself with a mask and with what he's wearing.”
The Dec. 2, 2022, killing of Cantu was preceded by another tragedy two months earlier, when Lopez's daughter, 16-yearold Danielle Lopez, was struck by multiple cars and killed on Interstate 680 in San Jose. Her boyfriend, Cantu's son, later would tell police that the two were arguing and that Danielle got out of their car, ran onto the freeway and was hit by at least four cars.
But the Lopez family wasn't buying it. According to police testimony, it believed Cantu's son actually pushed Danielle out of the vehicle. That was only exacerbated by rumors that members of the family had mocked Lopez at her gravestone after her death, and by the news that her body was so badly damaged it took four days and required DNA tests to make a positive identification.
Lopez also became convinced that Cantu's son had been pimping Lopez's daughter, according to police testimony, a detail elicited by Lopez's attorney not because it was necessarily true but to show his mentality around the time of the killing. Lopez's lawyer, Deputy Public Defender
Sarah Einhorn, said Lopez had been given “scant facts, heavy with rumor,” as he attempted to learn the truth all the way from Washington.
“He had been told that this boy was a monster, that there were videos of his daughter drunk, being humiliated, possibly to the financial benefit of this boyfriend,” Einhorn said, later adding “It's a terrible tragedy on all sides.”
Einhorn indicated that if the case goes to trial, she will argue the killing was done in the “heat of passion,” a technical term that lowers a homicide from murder to manslaughter. During the preliminary hearing, she said the shooting happened slightly out of view of a security camera at the Cantu's home, after Cantu lunged for Lopez's gun.
Judge David Pereda upheld the murder charge but didn't comment specifically on the evidence. Cantu is next due in court Jan. 9, and a trial date has not yet been set.
Just three weeks after Danielle Lopez was killed, the Cantus' Newark home was shot up. On the day of the homicide, Cantu's wife testified she was getting ready to pick their daughter up from a soccer practice when she heard “yelling and gunshots” outside.
She came out her front door to see “my husband holding himself” and bleeding from two gunshot wounds.
Video shows her telling him, “I love you” repeatedly as he dies, according to a transcript of the footage.
Cantu's wife identified Lopez as the shooter and said he left the area “peacefully.” Einhorn asked her what she meant by that.
“What peacefully means,” Cantu's wife replied. “No care in the world.”