Around noon one day in May 2016, Hector Velasquez walked over to the passenger side of a black Chrysler 300 sedan and leaned into the open window. A crack rang out, and Velasquez staggered backward, saying, “He shot me. He shot me.”
Hinojos, who is known as “Dopey,” went to prison at 19, when he was sentenced to 12 years for an armed robbery. He ended up doing 15 years in all after getting caught smuggling drugs into a Monterey County prison, according to a spokesperson for the state prison system. To interpret Hinojos’ words, prosecutors called to the witness stand Rene “Boxer” Enriquez, a Mexican Mafia member who defected in 2002. He has since testified in dozens of prosecutions of his former confederates, specializing in deciphering coded or veiled messages in phone calls, letters, notes and other communications.
The sedan sped off. As he lay dying, Velasquez told a sheriff’s deputy that a Hispanic man in a black Chrysler had shot him, the deputy testified.Six hours after the shooting, Hinojos’ girlfriend called his mother from jail, complaining that she’d been “calling him all day and nothing. It’s not ringing.”Three days later, the girlfriend called Hinojos from jail and asked: “Congratulations or what?”“I finished the project myself,” he said.
Vallejo criticized Enriquez, whom he dismissed as “the rapist, the killer, the sex offender, the robber, a prisoner with an agenda,” and his interpretation of his client’s words. The former Mexican Mafia member testifies “as if he’s the oracle of Delphi,” Vallejo said — the only one who can find sinister meaning in innocuous conversation.
Looming over the trial was another murder, one committed after Hinojos had been jailed on suspicion of killing Velasquez.
He looks like he is still calculating in the pic
Looking at those eyes I bet he wasn’t a sniper.