A parolee shot a girl in the head because she happened to be “at the wrong place, at the wrong time” while sitting in a vehicle near downtown Indio, a prosecutor alleged Wednesday.
Vicente Manuel Reyes, 30, of Thousand Palms allegedly perpetrated the attack in 2018. He’s charged with two counts of attempted murder, as well as sentence-enhancing gun and great bodily injury allegations and an allegation of being a prior-strike felon.
“One single moment can change a life,” Riverside County Deputy District Attorney Kevin Roeder told jurors in his opening statement Wednesday at the Larson Justice Center in Indio. “Two shots were fired, and Ashley was struck in the head.”
The prosecutor said that on the night of May 20, 2018, the girl was in a vehicle with other children when Reyes allegedly fired a handgun in her direction, though it was unclear exactly at what the defendant was aiming.
“Ashley was at the wrong place, at the wrong time,” Roeder said. “She survived. She was only 14 years old.”
He said the evidence presented by the District Attorney’s Office “will show that the defendant, Vicente Reyes, is guilty of shooting at a vehicle and attempted murder.”
The defense declined to deliver an opening statement, likely reserving the opportunity until later in the trial.
Reyes is being held in lieu of $2 million bail at the Benoit Detention Center.
According to the Indio Police Department, the convicted felon fired on the vehicle as it traveled through the area of John Nobles Avenue and Monroe Street.
Reyes was on the street at the time. A possible motive for the alleged attack wasn’t disclosed by the police department, which characterized it only as a “senseless act of violence.”
Inside the vehicle were the adult driver, whose identity was not released, along with Ashley, a 13-year-old girl, 5-year-old girl and 15-year-old boy, whose identities also weren’t provided.
Along with Ashley, the driver was nearly struck by the gunfire as well.
The girl was taken to a Coachella Valley trauma center for surgery and survived, though the long-term impact of the gunshot wound hasn’t been detailed.
Reyes was identified as the alleged assailant three days later and was arrested without incident in the area of Edom Hill and Varner roads in Cathedral City.
Court records showed that in 2012, the defendant and two other juveniles stabbed a boy in the parking lot of an Indio movie theater. Reyes was prosecuted as an adult and pleaded guilty to felony assault less than a year later.
He was sentenced to five years in state prison but was paroled in summer 2017, according to court documents.