GRANT COUNTY, Wash. - Two people accused in the shooting death of a Grant County woman in December 2016 have now been tied to another shooting death a few weeks earlier.
Five people are charged in the shooting death of Jill Marie Sundberg, 31, whose body was found shot 13 times along the Old Vantage Highway.
Two of those five, the Grant County Sheriff’s Office said, Fernando Marcos Gutierrez and Julio Albarran Varona were apparently involved in the shooting death of Arturo Sosa and critical injury of Jose Rafael Cano Barrientos, 33, both of Othello.
GCSO said the ex-girlfriend of Sosa, Eustolia Campuzano, 27, told Paula Rodriguez Cuevas, 29, that Sosa used to beat her when they were in a dating relationship.
Campuzano allegedly said she would like to give Sosa a beating so he could not get involved with other women, GCSO reported.
Cuevas introduced her to three men, likely at the Shady Tree RV Park near George, and they allegedly hatched a plan to assault Sosa as retaliation, GCSO said.
On Dec. 8, 2016, the group drank at the home of Cuevas and Campuzano in Othello until early in the morning. At 4 a.m. on Dec. 9, Gutierrez, Varona, and Campuzano – along with an unidentified man – left the house in a GMC Yukon, while Cuevas and another unidentified man slept at the house.
The group in the Yukon saw Sosa’s Ford Explorer driving west out of town, with Barrientos as a passenger, and got them to stop by flashing their headlights, GSCO said.
Deputies believe Gutierrez and Varona got out of the car with rifles and a handgun and confronted the two men – Barrientos and Sosa - on their way to work. GSCO said Barrientos and Sosa were forced back into their car and driven west on SR 26, while the Yukon with Campuzano and the unidentified man followed.
“During the drive, a struggle broke out in Sosa’s car. Barrientos was shot in the upper chest and injured and Sosa was shot in the head and killed,” Kyle Foreman, the GCSO public information officer said in a release. “Gutierrez and Varona then took Campuzano up to Sosa’s vehicle and made her look at Sosa’s body. Varona and Gutierrez allegedly threatened Campuzano, telling her, ‘You talk, and the second person you see is your son.’”
The group got back into the Yukon and went back to the Shady Tree RV Park near George and told Cuevas what had happened while she was sleeping.
“While being consoled by one of the men, that man allegedly held a gun to Cuevas’s head, threatening to kill her if she spoke of the shooting,” Foreman wrote in a release.
Foreman said forensic evidence obtained at the homicide scene matches that of Gutierrez, who is already charged with being a material witness along with immigration charges in the Sundberg case. Varona (aka Julio Mendez Villanueva) is charged with first degree murder and first degree kidnapping in the Sundberg case.
Neither man has been charged yet in the Sosa homicide, but remain in custody of GCSO.
The two women in the Sosa homicide case, Campuzano and Cuevas, are both in Grant County Jail for suspicion of first degree assault.
Three others were charged in the Sundberg murder: Gustavo Tapia Rodriguez, 39; Ambrosio Mendez Villanueva, 25; both face first degree murder and first degree kidnapping charges, while Salvador Espinoza Gomez, 24, was charged with being a material witness, and possession of a firearm, drug charges, as well as immigration charges.
Witnesses told GCSO that Jill Sundberg was in an argument with the alleged shooter, Rodriguez, at the Shady Tree RV Park on Dec. 22, 2016. After the argument, authorities said she was taken against her will to the location where her body was later discovered.
Sundberg’s body was found with a sign stabbed in her back. “For all those w*****, b******, and a******* that show no respect to the Gulf Cartel,” was the translated version from Spanish to English.
Foreman said the men claimed to be involved with the Gulf Cartel, and GCSO had received information from federal investigators that seemed to back those claims up.