Guilty of murder

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The jury found Angel Dejesus Vega-Sanchez, of Fort Dodge, guilty of first-degree murder in Webster County late Thursday afternoon.

After approximately three hours of deliberation, the District Court jury convicted Vega-Sanchez of the May 17 shooting of his wife.

Vega-Sanchez, 29, shot Rachelle Vega, 42, four times while she was sitting on a couch at a home at 1323 Fifth Ave. S.

Vega-Sanchez was stoic in his seat while the verdict was read.

Vega's mother and grandparents were in the courtroom when the verdict was read. Her mother, Georgia Ward, of Monument, Colo., cried.

Defense attorneys had argued that the charge should have been voluntary manslaughter, rather than first-degree murder, because he acted in the heat of passion.

Voluntary manslaughter is a Class C felony, punishable with 10 years in prison. First-degree murder, a Class A felony, means Vega-Sanchez faces life in prison without parole.

Defense attorney James Koll told jurors in closing arguments that his client only shot his wife after serious provocation. Vega-Sanchez claimed she pushed him into it.

Koll said that, had Vega-Sanchez planned to kill her that morning, he would have shot her when he first walked through the door.

Trial witnesses testified Vega-Sanchez was at the house on Fifth Avenue South for about 30 minutes before he shot Vega.

Koll said Vega publicly humiliated his client in front of other people in the house, mocked him, called him profane names and used a profane hand gesture. All that, Koll said, caused his client to react violently.

But prosecutor Laura Roan countered that the shooting was premeditated.

Roan, an assistant Iowa attorney general, said that after Vega-Sanchez located his wife that morning, he went to their house on South 21st Street to get two loaded guns.

Koll argued that the man who was with Vega-Sanchez at the time - Mario Isai Jimenez Ramos - was the one who got the shotgun and put it in Vega-Sanchez's car.

In trial testimony, Ramos admitted that a few hours earlier he had told Vega-Sanchez that he had slept with his wife.

In an interview immediately after his arrest the morning of the murder, Vega-Sanchez told Division of Criminal Investigation Agent Larry Hedlund that he had actually caught his wife in bed with a different man several months earlier.

While the defense had claimed Vega-Sanchez didn't aim at his wife, and that the shooting was an impulsive act, Roan said that scenario was unlikely, given that four shots hit her, one at the nape of her neck.

Vega-Sanchez did not testify, and the defense did not call any witnesses.

Hedlund said he apprehended Vega-Sanchez within a few hours of the shooting on the campus of Iowa Central Community College. Vega-Sanchez told investigators where he had hidden the murder weapon, which was found behind a tree near Friendship Haven.

Sentencing was set for Jan. 8.

Contact Angela Burch at (515) 573-2141 or aburch@messengernews.net