By Mike Cruz Staff Writer
Posted: 01/13/2011 07:09:33 PM PST
SAN BERNARDINO - A man accused of gunning down his estranged girlfriend in front of their 4-year-old son on Valentines Day 1993 in a hospital parking lot in Loma Linda was ordered held to face murder charges at trial.
After being extradited from Mexico last January, Juan Manuel Navarro appeared Thursday for a preliminary hearing in San Bernardino Superior Court in the death of 29-year-old Ignacia Manriquez.
After listening to the testimony of several witnesses - including the pair's now 22-year-old son - Judge Howard Wilson ruled that sufficient evidence existed to hold Navarro on charges of murder and kidnapping.
Navarro, 46, returns to court Jan. 26 to enter a formal plea on the charges.
Manriquez had taken her three children to visit a friend at a Base Line apartment in Highland on the weekend of the shooting. On Feb. 14, 1993, Navarro showed up at the residence, and Manriquez pulled a restraining order from her purse.
"She showed it to him, and he said that wasn't going to keep him away from her," said the woman's sister, Maria Murillo. The pair argued and when she tried to call police, Navarro forcefully took the phone from her.
"He didn't leave. He just stuck around," Murillo said.
When the sisters and kids decided to visit a swap meet, Navarro followed them everywhere they went. Later that day, Manriquez took her son, Juan "Juanito" Manriquez, to Loma Linda University Medical Center when he got the flu.
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Again, Navarro followed Manriquez, meeting her at the hospital. As they left, an ambulance tech saw and heard the couple arguing near Manriquez's truck in the parking lot.
Juan Manriquez, just 4 years old at the time, told authorities that he got in the passenger side of their truck, but then got back out and walked over to his parents just as the gunshots were fired.
"I saw my dad shoot my mom," Juan Manriquez testified Thursday. A silver handgun was used, he said. Navarro then grabbed his son's hand and fled.
Coroner's pathologists later determined Ignacia Manriquez died of multiple gunshots to the head and chest, according to testimony.
Juan Manriquez said he remembers Navarro driving to a nearby restaurant after the shooting, where he made a phone call and another car met them. Juan Manriquez was then driven to a ranch, where he didn't know anyone, he said.
"There was just parties every day," the son recalled. Adults at the ranch drank and sang songs around a fire, and he was treated meanly, he said. On March 3 of that year, the boy was taken to the Coachella home of Navarro's mother before being turned over to authorities.
Gerardo Martinez, a friend of Navarro, said he had been waiting for Navarro to arrive at his home early on Feb. 14, 1993 for a Valentines Day party. But Navarro called him that afternoon and appeared to be saying his goodbyes, he said.
"The party's over," Martinez recalled Navarro saying, he testified.
The victim's father, Antonio Manriquez, testified that he and his wife raised his daughter's three children, which included the boy and two daughters, then 7 and 11.
Navarro's sister, Maria Hernandez, testified that a month before the shooting, she heard her brother say: "If I can't have her, nobody will."
Navarro's lawyer, Palm Springs-based Mark J. Sullivan, said he will present evidence at trial "which will shed a whole new light on everything."
"This was just a preliminary hearing," Sullivan said. "The defense wasn't heard in the hearing."
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