‘Unexplainable.’ Tacoma man sentenced for shooting at SUV filled with people, killing 1

Judge Edmund Murphy heard witnesses testify in the murder and assault trial, listened to the lawyers’ arguments and saw the evidence, but when it came to sentencing the 26-year-old defendant Friday, Murphy said the crime was still unexplainable.

“We’ve got a vehicle that’s driving and following another vehicle. Then all of a sudden, the vehicle that you were in stops in the middle of the road,” Murphy told the defendant, Adrian Sanchez-Radilla. “Two people get out, one of them having been identified as you, and open fire on the car that’s occupied by three adults and two young children.”

Samuel Antonio Garza Gonzalez, 24, was fatally shot in the neck in the passenger’s seat, and at least eight more bullets lodged in the vehicle in a barrage of nearly two-dozen rounds. It was fortunate no one else was killed, Murphy said, including Garza Gonzalez’s wife, Nancy Zuniga, in the driver’s seat, and his cousin, Gerrono Sandoval, who was in the backseat with his two toddlers.

Based on that, the judge said, it was appropriate to sentence the defendant to about 87 years in prison as Pierce County prosecutors had recommended.

Sanchez-Radilla was the final of four defendants to be sentenced in Superior Court for the May 7, 2022, shooting in Tacoma’s Eastside neighborhood. A jury found him guilty July 2 of first-degree murder, four counts of first-degree assault, drive-by shooting and unlawful possession of a firearm.

Two other defendants, Bismar Francisco Andres, 30, and Johnathan J. Garcilazo Lucht, 26, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder. Andres was the driver and was sentenced July 19 to 35 years. Lucht was the second shooter and was sentenced July 3 to 32 years in prison.

Martin Solorzano Cruz, 25, testified for the state and pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. He was sentenced July 19 to time served, meaning he had to spend no more time incarcerated beyond the 660 days he already served in Pierce County Jail.

Although Murphy could not find an explanation for the shooting, three of Garza Gonzalez’s relatives who spoke during the sentencing hearing painted a clearer picture of the path that led Sanchez-Radilla to Murphy’s courtroom on Friday, and the trauma that has spread from his actions.

Garza Gonzalez’s cousin, Yesenia Zuniga, 27, told the court she met Sanchez-Radilla in middle school in Tacoma. Even then, Zuniga said, both the defendant and their mutual friends made it known to her that Sanchez-Radilla was in close proximity to gangs.

Zuniga had a relative who had ties to a different color than Sanchez-Radilla, and she said in school the defendant always used that fact as “bait.” She recalled him taunting her in the hallways and at her locker,and calling her a sort of slur for the opposite gang. Zuniga said she’s never understood the mentality.

“How you could fight, life or death, over a simple color or a street number?” she said. “For these reasons, I would always stay away from Adrian, and eventually I graduated and moved from schools.”

In contrast to Sanchez-Radilla, Zuniga said, Garza Gonzalez often mentioned his hatred for the violence that came from gangs. She said he grew up in even closer proximity to them due to family relations, but he understood the sacrifices his parents had made to stop the cycle of violence.

Garza Gonzalez’s parents moved to Tacoma in the mid-2000s from Merced, California, to escape gang violence.

His mother, Elisa Gonzalez, told the court Friday that Tacoma was once a peaceful place to live, and the violence that has plagued it in recent years needs to stop.

In the two years since her son’s death, she has started a nonprofit car club called Unidas Por Vida, Spanish for “United for Life.” Her son had a passion for old-school cars, and she said the club’s events raise money to support families who have been affected by homicide.

Before the shooting, she said, Garza Gonzalez had just signed up at Bates Technical College to begin the path to becoming a welder, and he and Nancy Zuniga were closing in on a year of marriage.

Now, she said, she is beset by “constant nightmares” that her other children will be shot in Tacoma, certain movies and music trigger her, and she’s careful not to tailgate any vehicle for fear they might have a bad reaction.

Further tragedy has followed her family. Gonzalez’s husband, Samuel Garza, became ill at the end of 2021, and since the shooting his condition has worsened to the point of becoming completely dependent and nonverbal. In January, Gonzalez’s nephew, Sandoval, who was in the SUV when the shooting occurred, died by suicide.

Gonzalez said Sanchez-Radilla had committed a cowardly act of violence, and people like him should not be allowed to walk the streets.

“You are truly a wicked person who has shown no mercy to me or the human being you committed this act of violence against,” she said.

Garza Gonzalez’s wife, Nancy Zuniga, was the last person from the victim’s family to address the court. She said the shooting had forever changed her life.

Nancy Zuniga, 28, recalled once being close friends with Sanchez-Radilla’s family, a time when she opened her doors to them for birthday parties and other get-togethers. She said she knew the lifestyle that Sanchez-Radilla carried with him, but she never believed something could happen that would make her want to tear them out of her life.

“I didn’t want to be in a situation like I am now, and unfortunately here I am, still standing here in a courtroom with a dead husband, going against somebody that I thought was my friend,” Nancy Zuniga said.

Nancy Zuniga described the trauma of watching her husband take his last breaths. She said it was something she wouldn’t wish on anyone.

“Everything here is broken,” she said. “I don’t wish you no harm. I hope you find the clarity that you need. And at the end of the day, Samuel’s memory will forever live on.”

Was the shooting about gangs?

The defendant’s gang ties were a centerpiece of his trial. Prosecutors argued to jurors that each of the four men involved were members of a street gang, one of several fighting to claim the territory where the shooting occurred, near 34th Street and McKinley Avenue. A gang expert with the Tacoma Police Department testified that at least six different gangs had laid claim to it.

On the night of the shooting, Garza Gonzalez and his wife drove to Olympia to watch a boxing match. When they returned to Tacoma, the couple, Sandoval and his children tried to visit a relative on the Eastside. After finding that the relative wasn’t home, they checked out a scenic viewpoint and then ended up following a white pickup truck for about three to four minutes at 11:10 p.m.

Garza Gonzalez was wearing a red baseball cap, and deputy prosecuting attorney Dru Swaim told jurors in closing arguments that the man had worn the wrong colors in the wrong neighborhood. The four defendants were in that white pickup, and she said the state’s gang expert testified that it’s considered unacceptable to do nothing about being followed in your own territory.

At 401 E. 35th St., Andres stopped the pickup and blocked the street until the victims’ vehicle came to a stop some distance behind it a minute later. Then, Sanchez-Radilla and Lucht got out of the passenger’s side of the pickup and opened fire.

Sanchez-Radilla’s attorney, John Meske, argued in closings that the gang theory was a “misdirection” from the state meant to stoke jurors’ emotions. He said it wasn’t an ambush and it wasn’t about gangs — it was an inappropriate response to a perceived threat.

In the end, jurors did not decide whether the shooting was about gangs. They left blank special verdict forms that asked them to conclude whether Sanchez-Radilla carried out the murder and assaults to obtain, maintain or advance his position in an organization such as a gang.

More criminal activity allegedly related to his gang ties have followed Sanchez-Radilla. Almost four months after Garza Gonzalez’s murder, Sanchez-Radilla allegedly spray-painted a gang tag on a man’s residence south of Tacoma, then shot the homeowner in the leg when he was confronted.

Sanchez-Radilla was expected to plead guilty in that first-degree assault case Friday, but deputy prosecuting attorney Sunni Ko said in court that the defendant had changed his mind and wished to proceed to trial. If convicted, Ko said, the defendant could face an additional 30 years.

Defendant declines to speak

After the victim’s relatives spoke in court Friday, Sanchez-Radilla’s defense attorney, Meske, said there was little he could ask Murphy to do. He said the range his client was facing was a life sentence, and he asked the court to impose low-end sentences on all counts.

Meske said he wanted to say on behalf of Sanchez-Radilla and himself that they recognized the extreme sorrow and sadness that Garza Gonzalez’s family had experienced. He said things like that should never happen.

Murphy then asked Sanchez-Radilla if he’d like to say anything.

“No. I politely decline,” he said.

After court adjourned, Elisa Gonzalez told The News Tribune she was satisfied with the sentence, and she felt that she had gotten justice for her son. She said she had hoped to hear some kind of remorse from Sanchez-Radilla, but he had chosen not to show any mercy.

Nancy Zuniga said the defendant’s punishment wasn’t enough time, but some justice was better than none.

“His sentencing isn’t going to bring Samuel back, but it’s definitely given me and other people a little bit more peace of mind that Adrian and these other people are now behind bars,” she said.