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SALT LAKE CITY — Three people have been ordered to stand trial in the death of a man police say was killed over a drug dealing rivalry.
Eddie Salazar, 41, of West Valley City; Bernadette Ramirez, 47, of Salt Lake City; and Arturo Frias-Gonzales, 25, of West Valley City, were bound over at the end of a two-day preliminary hearing Thursday to stand trial in the death of a West Valley man who was found beaten and shot in his home last year.
The three are each charged with murder, a first-degree felony.
Police say the trio went to the apartment of 63-year-old Steven Louis Valdez, 4150 S. Bluejay (4985 West), on July 25 and shot and beat him. Police found Valdez dead in an upstairs bedroom with a wallet and necklace reportedly stolen from him. He died from a gunshot wound to his leg and blunt force trauma to his head believed to be from a tire iron, according to an autopsy.
Valdez's niece, who was in the home at the time and saw the trio with weapons standing next to her badly bleeding uncle, escaped their gunfire and fled out of the window of the home with her infant, according to charging documents.
However, Ramirez and Frias-Gonzales caught up with the woman outside the home and forced her into an SUV, charges state. The two allegedly ordered her to tell police she witnessed "a home invasion robbery by a gang of masked men" and that they were in Wendover at the time of the killing.
The woman told police her uncle had been killed in a home invasion.
When police searched her apartment in October as part of a drug investigation, Ramirez told police she had gotten into an argument with Valdez for stealing her drug customers, and then blacked out, according to charging documents. Watches and a necklace belonging to Valdez were found in her home, and at one point she called a detective from Valdez's stolen cellphone, according to police.
Ramirez is also charged with aggravated robbery, a first-degree felony; two counts of aggravated kidnapping, a first-degree felony; child kidnapping, a first-degree felony; and obstructing justice, a second-degree felony.
Salazar is charged with aggravated robbery and aggravated kidnapping, first-degree felonies, and aggravated assault causing serious bodily injury, a second-degree felony.
Frias-Gonzales is charged with aggravated robbery and aggravated kidnapping, both first-degree felonies.
An arraignment for the three defendants is set for April 15.
