This news story was updated at 7:40 p.m. on Thursday June 9, 2011
By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
CHEHALIS – The 24-year-old woman shot in Napavine told police Javier Jimenez Villalavazo was calling her and her family a snitch before firing several rounds at her as she got back inside a car outside an apartment complex.
Eloisa Cruz-Garcia was struck twice in her right leg and didn’t know she was injured until after driving away, according to court documents in the case.
Javier Jimenez Villalavazo
Villalavazo, 22, was apprehended in the Lacey area last night and booked into the Lewis County Jail.
The shooting apparently occurred early Monday morning; it was initially believed to have happened on Sunday night, according to authorities.
Lewis County sheriff’s detectives, assisted by Thurston County and police officers from Centralia, Lacey, Tumwater and Olympia, made the arrest around 7 p.m. yesterday, according to the sheriff’s office.
A tip led them to a house which they surrounded, according to a sheriff’s office news release. Villalavazo tried to run, but was quickly stopped by a police dog, according to the news release.
The suspect, who is also known as “The Joker”, is being held for first-degree assault with a firearm.
He was scheduled to appear before a Lewis County Superior Court judge this afternoon.
The incident came to the attention of law enforcement early Monday morning from the emergency room at Providence Centralia Hospital.
Centralia police detective Pat Beall contacted the victim there and was originally told the shooting happened in Centralia, but further investigation showed the scene was inside Napavine city limits, according to court documents.
Sheriff’s detectives have assisted in the investigation for Napavine, a two-officer agency.
Charging documents offer the following details:
The woman, Cruz-Garcia, got a ride to the Park Place Apartments on the 100 block of Haywire Road in Napavine from a man named Carlos Apantiipan-Castrejon.
Apantiipan-Castrejon told a sheriff’s deputy he didn’t know why they wanted to go there. Also in his white Ford Crown Victoria were Cruz-Garcia’s 2-year-old child, her brother Brian Cruz and his friend.
When they arrived, Villalavazo came up to the passenger side of the car and began talking to her; at first she got out of the car, she said.
Apantiipan-Castrejon told a deputy it was fairly dark, he couldn’t see the man, and he didn’t know what they talked about because they were speaking English.
Cruz-Garcia said Villalavazo – who she has known from high school and used to be her brother’s friend – was calling her and her family a snitch, she said.
“She said she opened the passenger door and returned to the vehicle, and this is when Javier fired several shots from a firearm at here,” the documents state.
The shooter then ran away to Haywire Road.
She didn’t realize she was hit until Apantiipan-Castrejon drove them away. They didn’t know what to do, so he took them back to her apartment in Centralia. She went to the hospital to be treated, and was released by morning.
One of the bullets penetrated her right calf, and the other entered her upper right thigh and passed through to her left thigh.
Sheriff’s detectives later learned a woman called Napavine police at 12:25 a.m. on Monday and reported hearing three gunshots at 105 Haywire Road, and a voice shouting, “Your dead kid” before hearing a vehicle speed off.
Napavine Police Department’s Officer-in-charge Silas Elwood said he learned of the shooting about 6 o’clock to 7 o’clock on Monday morning.
Napavine Officer Noel Shields was actually in the area and heard the shots, Elwood said today.
“He heard it coming from a different direction, which is pretty common,” Elwood said.
Shields was joined by sheriff’s deputies trying to find the source, but didn’t.
“Like I said, it was a pretty dynamic incident, nobody hung around, they just took off,” Elwood said.
Court documents go on to describe the detective’s examination of the apartment parking lot and Crown Victoria – which by Monday morning had returned and was parked in the same spot where it reportedly had been hours earlier.
Detectives observed three shell casings on the ground and two “impact points’ consistent with bullets on the front passenger door of the car as well as one on the front passenger fender.
Sheriff’s detective Bruce Kimsey stated the projectiles did not travel through the car’s door.
Kimsey stated they also found suspected blood on the front passenger seat and on the ground, along with white paint chips.
Nothing in the documents indicate what Villalavazo thought Cruz-Garcia or her family “snitched” about.
Villalavazo is held on $100,000 bail. He is set to go before Judge Nelson Hunt at 4:15 p.m.
Update: The judge increased bail to $150,000. Villalavazo was scheduled to make his plea next Thursday.
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Read related stories:
• “News brief: Law enforcement searching for Napavine shooting suspect” from Monday June 6, 2011 at 3:39 p.m., here
• “News brief: Four booked as detectives seek suspected Napavine shooter” from Wednesday June 8, 2011 at 7:28 p.m., here
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