Prosecutors allege that Francisco Javier Escobedo and Alize Gonzales were arguing about drugs in the early morning hours of Nov. 10 when he shot her and later dumped her body alongside a road in Kent.
The Auburn man, 30, pleaded not guilty Dec. 1 to a charge of second-degree murder for what the King County Prosecutor alleges was his fatal shooting of the 19-year-old woman.
Escobedo is in jail with bail set at $2 million. A case setting hearing is at 1 p.m., Monday, Dec 14 in courtroom GA of the Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent.
Here is what happened, according to eyewitness accounts contained in the Determination for Certification of Probable Cause, which the Auburn Police Department filed on Nov. 17.
Gonzalez, Escobedo and two others spent the day and night of Nov. 9 in Escobedo’s apartment at 3312 I St. NE in Auburn, consuming illegal drugs, according to the police account. At about 2 a.m., Escobedo and Gonzalez began to argue, she calling him names and cursing him for not having provided more drugs.
At one point, according to the police account, Escobedo pulled a handgun from his pants pocket, pushed Gonzalez away, pointed the gun at her and, within a foot of her head, shot her in the neck. According to the account, Gonzalez immediately dropped against a wall, where she appeared to be dead.
According to one of the witnesses, having fired, Escobedo picked up the spent casing, commenting that he was going to leave to “get rid of the gun.” At that point, the witnesses fled the apartment.
At about 4 p.m. Nov. 10, according to the police account, a woman’s body was found alongside a road in Kent. Following up on what they had learned, police detectives served a search warrant on Escobedo’s apartment, where they found blood on the carpet near the corner of the bedroom, a dent near the bottom of the wall above the blood stain, a suspected bullet hole through the window and a bag containing Gonzalez’ identity a few feet from the corner.
Police arrested Escobedo in Kent on Nov. 11 as he was starting his work day. According to the police account, Escobedo subsequently kept changing his story about what had happened. Eventually, however, according to the account, he admitted to returning to the apartment and placing Gonzalez’ body in a blanket and searching for a spot to dump her body along the road in Kent.
