By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
A FaceTime call between a murder suspect and an alleged gang member and other jail phone calls have emerged as one of the pillars of the prosecution’s case against Clarissa Guerra.
District Attorney Suzanne West introduced those calls Wednesday, on the first day of witness testimony in Guerra’s murder trial, which began with jury selection Tuesday in state district court here.
After hearing testimony from the medical examiner who conducted the autopsy of De La Cruz, District Attorney Suzanne West called to the stand a tech advisor who works at the county jail and who spoke about the jail’s phone system and how telephone or FaceTime calls between inmates and those “outside” are recorded and handled.
Del Rio attorney Michael J. Bagley, who is representing Guerra, again objected to the admissibility of the FaceTime video. 83rd Judicial District Judge Robert E. Cadena, who is presiding over the trial, overruled the objection, allowing West to show the video to the jury.
The call took place at 5:52 p.m. on March 7, 2021, not 12 hours after De La Cruz’s murder, and the two participants in the call are Guerra and a man named Antonio “Pitaya” Elias, who was in jail after being arrested on unrelated federal charges.
In the video, Guerra appears relaxed and happy, laughing and smiling.
Elias appears to ask a question about “Sandrita” – De La Cruz – and Guerra twice, emphatically, draws a hand across her throat in a slashing motion. She then taps her chest.
Elias responds by making a series of motions with his hands and fingers, then uses both hands to make a going-to-sleep or sleeping motion. Guerra immediately forms a “gun” with one hand and tells Elias, “I told you I got you.”
After the jury viewed the video, West called to the stand a Border Patrol intelligence agent who testified about Elias and a Feb. 22, 2021 raid conducted on a mobile home where Elias had been staying. The agent testified about a number of calls between Guerra, Elias and members of their “group,” saying they discussed a range of criminal activities, including the smuggling of drugs and persons and “hurting people” they believed to be “snitches.”
Partway during the afternoon of testimony, one of the female jurors was escorted from the courtroom by bailiffs after she appeared to be experiencing some sort of distress. A short time later, Cadena announced the juror had been excused “for medical reasons,” and the male alternate juror selected on Tuesday took her place.
The jury spent the rest of the afternoon listening to jail calls, including several more phone calls between Guerra and Elias.
The Border Patrol agent told the jury, “They do talk about her (De La Cruz) a lot.”
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