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SALT LAKE CITY — A West Valley City man admitted Monday that he shot and killed a man during a downtown drug deal. He was ordered to serve up to life in prison.
Richard Michael Warner, 31, pleaded guilty to murder, a first-degree felony. In exchange for his plea, two second-degree felony counts of obstructing justice were dismissed. As part of the plea deal, Warner was immediately sentenced to 15 years to life in prison, with credit for time already served.
Warner was arrested and charged in December after Mario Zelaya-Zuniga, 32, of Honduras, was shot and killed during a drug deal with Warner and Austin James Herring, 29.
Herring was not charged in connection with the shooting.
The two men drove to meet Zelaya-Zuniga at 563 W. 200 South. While Zelaya-Zuniga was talking to Herring, who was driving, through the passenger-side window, Warner pulled out a gun and shot Zelaya-Zuniga in the neck, apparently without warning, according to police and charging documents.
Warner then burned the clothes he was wearing and tossed the gun into the Jordan River, the charges state.
Shortly after the shooting, police obtained surveillance footage of the shooter and the getaway vehicle and released it to the media. Due to the high media attention, Herring called police from his home in Bluffdale, where he lives with his parents, and >turned himself in.
Herring then gave detectives Warner's name, and they arrested him at his house in West Valley City several hours later, according to police.
State court records indicate Warner pleaded guilty to misdemeanor drug possession in 2002, burglary-related crimes and interfering with an arrest in 2003, and marijuana possession in 2006.
