Self defense or murder? Jury delivers verdict in killings at Old Town parking garage
A Sedgwick County jury deliberated for about 90 minutes before convicting a Wichita man of multiple counts of murder and other crimes in the shooting deaths of two people last summer on the top floor of a parking garage in Old Town Square.
For jurors, the case came down to a question of whether the killings were unjustified homicides or a case of self-defense.
Zachary A. Ramirez, 20, was found guilty Friday after a weeklong trial of two counts of first-degree felony murder, two alternative counts of second-degree intentional murder, two counts of battery and one count each of criminal discharge of a weapon and aggravated battery, said Dan Dillon, a spokesman for the Sedgwick County District Attorney’s Office. Ramirez was convicted of killing a friend, 20-year-old Josephina Lerma-Dominguez, and her boyfriend, 21-year-old Bryan Lara-Hernandez, on July 27, 2023, following a verbal argument and shoving match where Lara-Hernandez reportedly pulled a gun to end the fight.
The shootings happened after 3 a.m. in the parking garage at 321 N. Moore, next to the now-closed Old Town Regal Warren theater.
Prosecutors contended at trial that Ramirez laid “in wait” for an opportunity to strike back at Lara-Hernandez for pointing the gun at him and his friends and for calling him a name. Lara-Hernandez and Lerma-Dominguez were in a Honda car, backing out of a parking stall to leave, when an enraged Ramirez fired 14 times into the passenger side window, making them “a sitting target,” Sedgwick County Assistant District Attorney Jason Roach said.
“They didn’t have time to react. That was an ambush,” he said.
He told jurors: “This is not a case about self-defense. This is a case about (how) one man’s anger took two people’s lives.”
Defense lawyers painted the shootings differently, as a kill or be killed situation. Ramirez, who took the witness stand, claimed he fired into the car window because he thought Lara-Hernandez was about to pull the gun again and shoot him. He told jurors he felt frightened after Lara-Hernandez pointed the gun at him during the argument. He thought he was about to die when he saw Lara-Hernandez lean back in his car seat and start to raise his arm, he testified — although there was no evidence Lara-Hernandez was holding a gun at that time.
“It had to be me or him,” Ramirez told jurors, insisting that he “didn’t want to kill anyone that night.”
“You can’t introduce a gun into a fistfight,” one of his lawyers, Steve Mank, said, arguing that Ramirez had no duty to retreat and “felt compelled to defend himself” and his friends.
Ramirez had been at the parking garage the morning of the shooting listening to music with friends when the battery on his Jeep died. He contacted Lerma-Dominguez, a friend, and asked her to bring jumper cables. After she and Lara-Hernandez arrived, they tried to start the Jeep but their jumper cables didn’t work. A Good Samaritan in the area stopped to help.
But for reasons that weren’t entirely clear, one of Ramirez’s friends sucker punched the Good Samaritan and Ramirez joined in the attack. Ramirez was also confrontational with Lara-Hernandez, starting a fight that Lerma-Dominguez tried to break up, according to testimony. Ramirez physically assaulted both, a probable cause affidavit released by the court says.
Lara-Hernandez ended the scuffle by pulling a pistol with a laser sight and pointing it at Ramirez and his friends. The couple then got into their car to leave.
Surveillance cameras at the parking garage, which caught the entire ordeal on film, shows Ramirez step toward the passenger window where Lara-Hernandez is sitting, fire repeatedly and then get into his Jeep and drive off.
He threw the gun in a trash bin and had a friend hold his cellphone, according to trial testimony. Police never found the weapon, which Ramirez testified he always carried in his vehicle because he’s an Uber Eats delivery driver.
Wichita police have said previously that a street sweeper found the couple’s bodies. Lara-Hernandez had eight bullet wounds, including some to his lungs, heart and aorta, according to the affidavit. Lerma-Dominguez was hit three times in the lungs, the affidavit says.
Wichita police used the surveillance footage from the parking garage and other cameras to identify and track Ramirez’s vehicle. Ramirez turned himself in to officers while they were talking to his mother, the affidavit says. He testified that when he left the shooting scene, he didn’t know anyone had died and decided to surrender when he saw news of the double shooting on Facebook.
At the time, he told officers that he “had to react” because “a dude pulled a gun on us,” the affidavit says.
Ramirez’s sentencing date had not yet been set Monday. He’s facing life in prison plus the possibility of additional time.
Although Ramirez was convicted of both felony murder and second-degree intentional murder, he will be sentenced only for the more severe charge, Dillon said.
“Cases can be charged alternatively if there are two or more theories of how the crime was committed. Each charge can be presented to a jury and a defendant may be convicted of more than one of the alternative charges,” Dillon said.
“However, the defendant can only be sentenced for one of the alternative counts, that being the most severe offense. In this case, the felony murder counts are the more severe counts to be sentenced.”
