A 34-year-old man was convicted Monday of gunning down a man in his RV near Anaheim nearly six years ago as a part of a robbery and revenge plot.
Ricardo Martin Campos was convicted of first-degree murder with a sentencing enhancement for discharge of a gun causing death. Campos, who was convicted of killing 28-year-old Eli Gamaliel Victoriano-Che, is scheduled to be sentenced May 16.
The trouble started for the victim when he got into a conflict with Johanna Cecilia Leon-Pateyro, who pleaded guilty in August 2020 to voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to 11 years in prison.
Victoriano-Che was at a Motel 6 in Garden Grove with Leon-Pateyro when they got into an argument over his “unwanted sexual advances towards her,” according to Senior Deputy District Attorney Nick Thomo.
Leon-Pateyro tried to get Victoriano-Che kicked out, which led to the police being called and Victoriano-Che going home to his RV, which was parked at Dale Street and Augusta Drive in an unincorporated area of Anaheim, Thomo said.
Leon-Pateyro was enraged that police had been called because she had methamphetamine on her, so she called Campos to join her with some other friends to rob Victoriano-Che, Thomo said.
“It’s this desire for retaliation that this whole plan begins,” Thomo said.
One of two other men in the RV opened the door when the group arrived and refused to let them in until he was threatened at gunpoint to step aside, Thomo said.
Campos shot the victim in the head and then fled to Texas, where he was later arrested in 2022 and brought back to Orange County to face charges.
Leon-Pateyro demanded money from the victim before the shooting, Thomo argued. Victoriano-Che appeared to have been trying to comply with the demand before he was shot, saying he had to go get the cash in his car, Thomo said.
“This defendant shot him dead,” Thomo told jurors.
After the shooting, Campos ran to the getaway car and told one of the members of the crew, Daniel Flores, to speed off, and they left the rest of the crew behind, Thomo said, “because (Flores) was scared of the defendant.”
Thomo noted Campos deactivated his Facebook account following the shooting, a sign of his “consciousness of guilt.”
“Guilty people do guilty things to cover their tracks,” Thomo said, adding Campos had a habit of messaging through the social media app and had been doing so with Leon-Pateyro the night of the shooting.
Police also concluded that the cell phone Campos was using pinged off cell towers near the scene of the shooting, Thomo said.
The victim “was viewed as a rat, a snitch,” Thomo said of the motivation to attack him.
Leon-Pateyro had sent a message that night saying, “I’m going to get my homies to kill this fool,” Thomo said.
Campos “racked” the gun outside the RV, Thomo said. And the defendant told Leon-Pateyro to take the victim’s phone so he couldn’t call 911, he added.
Defense attorney Fred Fascenelli argued that most of the evidence in the case came from the accessories in the killing.
“You have to find individual evidence” to corroborate their evidence, Fascenelli said, arguing it was thin. “They’re co-conspirators and … they’ll throw you under the bus.”
Campos sent a message to Leon-Pateyro the night of the shooting that “I don’t bang,” meaning he wasn’t a gang member, Fascenelli said.
“So much for being a homeboy,” the defense attorney said.
The other two men in the RV couldn’t identify the shooter, Fascenelli said.
As for Leon-Pateyro, “She was charged with murder, and she got a sweet deal,” Fascenelli said.
Thomo argued that one of the men in RV picked Campos out in a photo line-up, but Fascenelli said it was not a “fair” line-up.