One of Orange County's most messed-up slayings of 2011 happened the afternoon of Aug. 27, when an Anaheim woman was fatally shot in the head as her children–a 3-year-old boy, 1-year-old girl and a 1-month-old boy–watched.
The late Nicole Gutierrez's then-boyfriend, 23-year-old Samuel Oscar Montes, pleaded guilty Friday under a deal that will likely send him to state prison for 15 years after sentencing in September. The prosecutor says he negotiated the plea deal because of issues with proving a murder case and the victim's family being OK with it.
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Samuel Oscar Montes Indicted for g.f. Nicole Gutierrez's Murder in Front of Their Wee Kids
Senior Deputy District Attorney Scott Simmons told City News Service that 20-year-old Montes and Gutierrez were having an argument when they got into a struggle and the gun went off.
Montes pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter with a sentencing enhancement for the use of a gun, and prosecutors dropped a murder charge and three counts of child abuse and endangerment that, with a conviction, could have sent the defendant to prison for 50 years to life.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.