{"id":28727,"date":"2024-03-14T00:34:55","date_gmt":"2024-03-14T00:34:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/plewe-considers-jury-trial-for-alleged-street-shooter\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T06:38:38","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T06:38:38","slug":"plewe-considers-jury-trial-for-alleged-street-shooter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/plewe-considers-jury-trial-for-alleged-street-shooter\/","title":{"rendered":"Plewe considers jury trial for alleged street shooter"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Trinadie
Trinadie Lopez\u2019s next plea hearing will take place on March 26 at 11 a.m.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

At his plea hearing on Tuesday in the 22nd Judicial District, Trinadie Xavier Lopez, 19, was given another plea hearing date by Judge Todd Plewe. If the plea is not accepted at the new plea date of March 26, Lopez will go to a jury trial.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Lopez appeared in court with his Durango attorney, Richard Jaye, at 10 a.m. for his plea hearing. Jaye informed Plewe that the plea paperwork was not finished, and they may need to file for continuance.<\/p>\n

Jaye said Lopez planned to plead guilty to a felony charge of first-degree assault, which would give him a sentence of six months in the Montezuma County Detention Center, though the paperwork said \u201cno sentencing\u201d rather than having an agreed-upon sentencing.<\/p>\n

Plewe voiced his concern over the proposed sentencing, saying, \u201cI would have a hard time with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

He expressed concern over the plea, saying that six months in the county jail didn\u2019t seem like an adequate sentence for a Class 3 felony and suspected drive-by shooting.<\/p>\n

Plewe asked Jaye for some background on Lopez\u2019s participation in the September street shooting in Cortez, to which Jaye said there was no definitive way to determine who had fired the gun.<\/p>\n

According to Jaye, Lopez was sitting behind the driver, and the shots were thought to have been fired from the back passenger seat. The district attorney also acknowledged that video footage didn\u2019t help determine who had fired the gun that severely injured 18-year-old Josilyn Mark. They noted that three possible shooters were in the vehicle.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a difficult case to prove, at best,\u201d Jaye said.<\/p>\n

Jaye said Lopez told him that he didn\u2019t fire the weapon, but the DA informed Plewe that Lopez was the most likely person to have been the shooter, based on their investigation.<\/p>\n

Because of the nature of the case and the difficulty in knowing who fired the gun, Plewe said was leaning toward a jury trial. Jaye said he would prefer a plea agreement because of Lopez\u2019s age and no criminal history in the past.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m having a great deal of difficulty with this type of plea,\u201d Plewe said.<\/p>\n

Jaye told Plewe there were issues with certain \u201cwhite kids\u201d on the reservation. Plewe said he knew there were issues \u201cgoing on between these two parties\u201d thought to be involved in the shooting, but that he ultimately had concerns about the safety of the community.<\/p>\n

Plewe said that in the case of an incident where it is difficult to know exactly what happened, justice is often better served in a jury trial.<\/p>\n

Lopez will have one more plea hearing date on March 26 at 11 a.m. If the plea agreement isn\u2019t approved by Plewe, Lopez will then go on to a jury trial.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

defense will present one more potential plea deal on March 26<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26708,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,133,168,28,60,29,390],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-28727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-courts","tag-crime","tag-headlines","tag-montezuma-county","tag-newsletter","tag-shooting"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28727"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28727\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80511,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28727\/revisions\/80511"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28727"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=28727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}