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STANSBURY PARK — A third person has been charged in connection with the shooting death of a man whose body was found discarded off the side of the freeway in Tooele County.
Johnnie Marie Estrada, 51, of Midvale, was charged Tuesday in 3rd District Court with four counts of obstructing justice, a second-degree felony.
Estrada is the mother of Alejandro Manuel Moore, 30, who was charged Monday with murder for the death 42-year-old Anthony Bracamonte, of Ogden. After her son's arrest, Estrada went to the State Bureau of Investigation headquarters on Monday.
"She said that the police had been looking for her and she wanted to talk," according to a police booking affidavit.
On Feb. 15, Bracamonte's body was found by a passing motorist on the west side of the freeway about 2 miles from the Grantsville turnoff. He had been shot multiple times. According to a police booking affidavit, 12 shell casings were found at the scene.
Investigators retraced Bracamonte's steps and learned he and Moore were friends, but that their friendship was sometimes turbulent. During the early morning hours of Feb. 12, Moore, Bracamonte, Estrada and David Tenis had been in a car heading to Wendover.
Estrada claims that Bracamonte tried to kiss her in the car and that Moore stopped the car on I-80 just past the Tooele exit and told Bracamonte to get out, according to police. Estrada claims that Bracamonte grabbed Moore's gun from the glovebox before getting out, but that she then "put her head down" and didn't see what happened next, only hearing gunshots, according to the affidavit.
Estrada told police she didn't remember much about the shooting, but allegedly admits telling the other men not to contact police, the affidavit states. She then made sure that all three of them "had the same story" if they were questioned and also "worked with them to destroy possible evidence," the affidavit states.
"Johnnie conspired to obstruct the investigation to protect her son Alex," investigators wrote in the affidavit.
Tenis, 32, of West Valley City, was also charged Monday with two counts of obstructing justice, a second-degree felony.
