Atwater man charged in two separate homicide cases

An Atwater man was charged with murder Thursday in connection with the 2013 slaying of a 71-year-old Ballico man and faces other charges in an unrelated homicide case.

Dionicio Gutierrez-Salazar, 36, was charged Thursday with murder in the death of Ramon Jimenez, who was shot and killed during an alleged home-invasion robbery on Feb. 19, 2013, at his home in the 19000 block of Lombardy Avenue in Ballico.

Another man charged in the case, Rogallano Gonzalez Munoz, has been in custody since October 2013. He has pleaded not guilty to murder and is scheduled for a jury trial Dec. 8 before Judge Ronald W. Hansen in Merced Superior Court.

Nicole Silveira, the deputy district attorney prosecuting the case, said it was too early to comment on the roles prosecutors believe each man played in Jimenez’s death. Munoz was initially charged with personally discharging a firearm in the case, but that allegation was dropped.

“Obviously, we believe both defendants were involved in the case, but that’s about all I can say at this point,” Silveira told the Sun-Star on Thursday.

Gutierrez-Salazar’s alleged involvement in the death only became part of the court case after he was arrested this month in connection with an unrelated homicide.

Gutierrez-Salazar was one of three men arrested Sept. 9 and charged with killing a man, a slaying allegedly recorded on a cellphone video camera. Co-defendants Francisco Alvarez, 24, and Alexis Eduardo Garcia-Jimenez, 19, were arrested that same day.

All three are accused of playing roles in the death of Carlos Humberto Herrera, who was beaten, tied to a chair and stabbed. His body was rolled into a rug and set ablaze in a remote orchard near Snelling, authorities said. Herrera was killed on or around Sept. 5, according to the Merced County Sheriff’s Department.

Arraignment hearings for the three defendants in the Herrera case have been delayed several times as the courts have scrambled to find three attorneys who can represent them separately, said Harold Nutt, Merced County chief deputy district attorney.

All three men are scheduled to appear in court again on Oct. 1.

This story was originally published September 24, 2015 at 6:59 PM with the headline "Atwater man charged in two separate homicide cases."