Trial begins in Turnpike slayings’ ‘nasty world of drugs’
January 27th, 2009 by Post StaffWEST PALM BEACH — The Escobedo family didn’t last six months in south Florida.
Instead, Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Carlton said, the family of four met their deaths in a violent, execution-style killing October 13, 2006 at the hands of two men, Ricardo Sanchez, Jr. and Daniel Troya.
See more in the Palm Beach Post here
In opening arguments in the federal death penalty trial of Sanchez and Troya, together with the drug conspiracy trials for Danny Varela and Liana Lee Lopez, Carlton boiled down all the crimes to a single word - drugs.
“This whole thing begins and ends in the nasty word of drugs.”
Carlton showed jurors photos of the bodies of Jose Luis Escobedo, 28; his wife, Yessica Escobedo, 25; and their sons Luis Julian, 3, and Luis Damian, 4. All four were found shot to death in a grassy area along the turnpike near Fort. Pierce.
Sanchez and Troya could face the death penalty. Varela, accused of running the drug ring the group was in, and Lopez, a suspected drug courier, both face life in prison.
Carlton said the Escobedos were murdered to erase a drug debt and for the theft of the drugs Jose Luis Escobedo was carrying.
By Daphne Duret, Palm beach Post Staff Writer
Tags: death, drugs, Escobedo, federal, hand, jurors, murder, photos, shot, slaying, theft, trial, Turnpike, wife, Yessica
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January 27th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
I think those 2 should be taken out on the turnpike and shot down like they their victims. No need to waste taxpayer money on a trial. As the saying goes - and Eye for an Eye.