Trial underway for Atwater man charged with killing two people two years apart

An Atwater man stabbed another more than 40 times more than two years after shooting a Ballico man in the head, prosecutors said Friday.

Dionicio Gutierrez-Salazar, 38, appeared in Merced County Superior Court on Friday, wearing a light blue dress shirt and headphones in which the proceedings were translated into Spanish. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges of murder in the deaths of Carlos Herrera and Ramon Jimenez, two men killed in unrelated incidents more than two years apart.

The defendant’s court-appointed defense attorney, Katherine Hart, did not give an opening statement on Friday.

Gutierrez-Salazar stabbed the 36-year-old Herrera in the chest, back, neck and eyes on Sept. 5, 2015, according to Travis Colby, Merced County deputy district attorney. Two other men were in the Atwater home at the time.

“The defendant turned to his friends and asked his friends to take cellphone video and photos of the stabbing,” Colby told jurors.

Colby, in his opening remarks Friday, said the other two men in the room likely will testify that Gutierrez-Salazar stabbed Herrera in self defense, but prosecutors said the evidence in the case will show otherwise.

Investgators believe physical evidence indicates Herrera already was on the ground when Gutierrez-Salazar began stabbing him, Colby said.

The men then wrapped Herrera in plastic and burned his body in an almond orchard in the northeast corner of Merced County, according to prosecutors. There are also cellphone photos of the burning body.

The other victim, Jimenez, 71, was shot and killed during a home-invasion robbery on Feb. 19, 2013, at his home in the 19000 block of Lombardy Avenue in Ballico.

The victim’s estranged wife was visiting him that day when three men arrived and started talking to Jimenez about a loan, according to Nicole Silveira, the supervising deputy district attorney.

Eventually, Gutierrez-Salazar took the man and wife into a back bedroom and threatened to shoot the woman, Silveira said. He told the woman to turn her head.

“A single shot was fired by the defendant into the head of Ramon Jimenez,” Silveira said.

The men rummaged through the house, and left with a “case of some sort” holding paperwork and money, Silveira said. The wife was able to give investigators a description, but could not pick the men out of a lineup.

Alexis Eduardo Garcia-Jimenez, 20, and Francisco Alvarez, 25, accepted plea agreements from the Merced County District Attorney’s Office in relation to the Atwater incident and were given credit for time served in custody.

The trial continues Tuesday.

This story was originally published May 26, 2017 at 5:36 PM with the headline "Trial underway for Atwater man charged with killing two people two years apart."