Man to estranged wife before shooting: ‘if you’re not with me, I’m going to kill you’
Before she was fatally gunned down in her home on July 7, 2018, Lucy Mojica told her ex-husband that her recently estranged beau had threatened her life if they weren’t together.
“If you’re not with me, I’m going to kill you,” she reportedly said Juan Carlos Caballeros-Yescas told her.
Caballeros-Yescas’s defense attorney declined to comment on the case.
According to an arrest affidavit released Thursday in Mojica’s nearly two-year-old homicide, her marriage to Caballeros-Yescas, who is now charged with murder in her death, had fallen apart. Caballeros-Yescas had moved out of their home, at 531 W. 17th St., at least a month prior and was reportedly living at a new address on South Main Street.
But even after the break up, Mojica had concerns about him, including reporting the ominous warning to her ex and calling police over a burglary at her home where only Caballeros-Yescas’ belongings had been stolen, the affidavit says.
The day she died, Mojica was at home talking with a friend in a bedroom when she stepped out into the kitchen to take a phone call from an ex-husband.
After she left, the friend “heard a knock at the door and heard Lucy say in Spanish ‘no, no, wait,’” the affidavit says.
Within moments, the friend heard the sound of a gun being racked. Six to eight shots followed.
The friend then heard the sound of the gun being racked again.
The friend “hid in the closet for safety” for 20 to 30 seconds before he heard a car “peel out,” according to the affidavit.
When he emerged, he saw Mojica lying facedown on the kitchen floor in blood. He called 911 at 12:20 p.m.
Mojica, 41, was taken to a Wichita hospital, where she was pronounced dead 22 minutes after the 911 call. She had at least 16 wounds to her body and there was a bullet tangled in her hair, the affidavit says.
Officers found several shell casings on her kitchen floor.
Police quickly zeroed in on Caballeros-Yescas as the suspect in the homicide. According to people interviewed by police, Caballeros-Yescas talked of killing Mojica after the shooting. One person told police that Caballeros-Yescas had admitted to friends and family that he’d shot her and “threatened to kill them all if they called police.”
Another person reported seeing Caballeros-Yescas wave a gun and shout that “‘he did not want to kill her.’”
A girlfriend of Caballeros-Yescas also told police that he killed Mojica, the affidavit says. He reportedly told the girlfriend that he hit Mojica, “I emptied my gun, I shot her multiple times, I shot my wife” and that he “was tired of his wife threatening and belittling him and was talking about needing to leave.”
Caballeros-Yescas, 27, was wanted on a warrant for the killing for nearly two years. He was captured in El Paso, Texas, on May 9 and extradited to Kansas to face charges of first-degree premeditated murder, aggravated burglary and aggravated assault.
His next court date, for a preliminary hearing, is July 23. He remains in the Sedgwick County Jail in lieu of $500,000 bond.
This story was originally published June 29, 2020 at 12:45 PM.
