Plea offer rejected in murder case; trial date is set
A new trial date was set Wednesday in Yuma County Superior Court for murder suspect Christopher Carreno, who has been charged in last year’s shooting death of a teenager who was a passenger in a car that was fired upon.
Carreno is accused of killing 15-year-old Victor Sanchez and has rejected a plea offer from prosecutors. Terms of the plea are not known because it was not accepted in open court.
Instead, Carreno will take his chances with a jury, which will decide whether he’s guilty of premeditated first-degree murder and 34 other felony offenses in Sanchez’s death.
Those other charges include six counts of aggravated assault, four counts of endangerment and 17 for assisting a criminal street gang. He remains in custody at the Yuma County jail on $2 million bond. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
It was initially thought Carreno would accept the plea offer because, at a December hearing, his attorney, Michael Donovan, asked to have his client’s January trial date vacated and a change of plea hearing scheduled.
However, during Wednesday’s hearing Donovan asked for a trial date for sometime in May, saying he expected it would take about three weeks to try. He also asked the second case against his client — in which he allegedly fired a weapon at a residence and assisted a street gang in the commission of several crimes — be first.
Superior Judge David Haws, who is presiding over the case, told Donovan he would rather let the prosecution decide which case to try first, prompting prosecutor Nathan Sorenson to tell the court it would be taking the murder case to trial first.
Haws then set a May 1 date for the trial and April 18 for the final pre-trial conference, at which time all lists of exhibits, witnesses and the jury instructions will be submitted. He also stated that a trial date will be set for the other case following the conclusion of the murder trial.
The shooting happened at approximately 11:26 p.m. on Jan. 9, 2016, in the 600 block of South 17th Avenue.
The initial investigation into the shooting revealed multiple shots were fired into a vehicle and a teenager, later identified as Sanchez, was struck.
Sanchez was flown to a Phoenix hospital and was listed in critical condition. He died four days later on Jan. 13.
Yuma police had been actively investigating this case since it happened and arrested Carreno in September 2016.