By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
Testimony began Tuesday in the trial of Freddy Villanueva, who was charged with murder and tampering with evidence in the 2019 death of Del Rioan Manuel Sanchez.
A six-woman, six-man jury was selected Monday.
Judge Sid L. Harle, presiding judge of the Fourth Administrative Judicial Region of San Antonio, is hearing the case, with District Attorney Suzanne West representing the state, and Sylvia Cavazos of San Antonio and Omar Fuentes of Del Rio representing Villanueva.
Jury selection was conducted throughout the day Monday in the Del Rio Civic Center, where the proceedings were moved after an air conditioner malfunctioned in the Paul Poag Theatre for the Performing Arts.
Court on Tuesday began with West reading the indictment against Villanueva, and Villanueva pleading not guilty to the charges of murder and tampering with evidence in the March 23, 2019 death of Sanchez.
Harle then recognized West for her opening statement to the jury.
West told the jury some of the witnesses against Villanueva are co-defendants in the criminal case and said she could not predict what they would say.
The gist of their narrative, West said, would involve a fatal meeting between four friends riding in a car and several persons at a Del Rio home.
In the car were Villanueva, Kelvin Brown, Lennox Matthews and Mario Rivera-Vasquez, who had been out drinking most of the night. The four stopped at Villanueva’s mother’s house, where they encountered Villanueva’s mother, Villanueva’s sister, Rick Menchaca and Sanchez, the victim.
At some point, an altercation arose between Villanueva and Sanchez, West told the jury.
Villanueva punched Sanchez, and Sanchez fell to the ground in the front yard of Villanueva’s mother’s home.
Sanchez was then beaten – reportedly punched and kicked by the men who had arrived at the home in the car. Those men left the residence briefly, then returned and stuffed Sanchez into the back of his own car, which one of them then drove to the back of a tire shop on Las Vacas Street, where they abandoned it.
“The way he was stuffed into the vehicle killed him in two minutes,” West told the jury.
None of those involved or any of the witnesses to the incident ever called police, she added.
Cavazos, in her opening statement, told the jury, “None of this happened because of Freddy Villanueva,” adding that the stories the co-defendants told police investigators don’t match.
She said some of the testimony jurors would hear would be “self-serving.”
Cavazos said in 2019, Villanueva was a 23-year-old out with friends when he stopped by his mother’s house for a charger and learned that one of the persons at the house, Sanchez, was a “sex offender, a child molester.”
“Freddy Villanueva did not approve of this person being at his mother’s house. All he wanted to do was to get this person away,” Cavazos said.
She told the jury that Villanueva only pushed Sanchez and did not take part in the subsequent beating. She also told the jury Villanueva did not help place Sanchez in his car.
Cavazos also told the jury that Sanchez was breathing when Villanueva’s companions placed him in his car and left him.
She pointed out the owner of the tire shop where Sanchez was found the next day also thought Sanchez was “passed out drunk” in his car and waited about an hour before calling police.
“Freddy Villanueva did not intentionally or knowingly cause bodily injury to anyone. There is no evidence Freddy Villanueva put Manuel Sanchez in the car . . . Freddy Villanueva did not conceal Manuel Sanchez’s car,” Cavazos said.
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