The trial of 20-year-old Jouse Kadriel Ortiz-Serrano, who has admitted to the fatal shooting of a man he believed had weeks earlier shot his father, began Tuesday morning in the courtroom of Lebanon County Judge Bradford Charles.
Jean Alvarado Rosado died in a barrage of gunfire on North 8th Street in the city on the evening of Feb. 23, 2022. The shooting was across the street from the former Lebanon Middle School.
Ortiz-Serrano entered a guilty plea to a general homicide charge in July 2023.
A jury of eight women and four men was selected Monday to decide whether Ortiz-Serrano will be sentenced for 1st-degree murder, 3rd-degree murder, or voluntary manslaughter.
Read More: Jury to decide degree of guilt for admitted 2022 killer
The Lebanon County District Attorney is not seeking the death penalty, so a 1st-degree murder conviction would result in life in prison.
In her opening statement Monday afternoon, defense attorney Gail Marr conceded that her client committed the deadly attack because he believed his father, Jose Serrano, had been shot and paralyzed by Alvarado Rosado in an attempted robbery a few weeks earlier.
Prosecutors do not appear to be disputing that theory, and county Detective William Walton testified later in the day that Alvarado Rosado had in fact been developed as a suspect in what is believed to have been a drug-related shooting of the defendant’s father.
Marr told Charles yesterday that she expects her client to testify in his defense.
The scene
Trial began with Assistant District Attorney Kevin Dugan projecting a series of neighborhood maps and photographs on courtroom screens while he took two North 8th Street residents through their recollections of the evening of the shooting.
Francis Pennington told the jury that he was watching TV in his home when he heard what sounded like multiple gunshots. He walked outside once police and EMTs arrived and saw a man lying still on the sidewalk.
Pennington told the jury that he had an outside camera at the front of his home that was 35 yards from the body. He secured the camera’s audio and video recording in his house before turning it over to police.
Dugan then played Pennington’s audio and video. It didn’t show anyone, but 20 shots in three groups could easily be heard, followed by fainter sounds.
Prosecutors contend that Ortiz-Serrano beat and pistol-whipped Alvarado-Rosado after shooting him, and Dugan suggested, over Marr’s objection, that the last sounds were the beating. Charles told the jury that only they could decide what caused the sounds.
Neighbor Jennifer Boyer testified that she was home in the evening when she heard multiple gunshots “pretty fast and together,” followed by a “ping,” which she thought was a bullet striking the metal banister on her front porch.
“I got up and shut and locked my front door,” she said, then looked out her window and “saw someone running past me, toward the tracks.” Boyer eventually went outside, before police arrived, and saw a man “laying on the sidewalk in front of the church” a few doors south of her home.
Lebanon police Lt. Sean Buck testified that he was called to Lebanon Middle School for a reported shooting and was the third officer on the scene. He found a man with a “faint pulse” wearing a ski mask, lying on the sidewalk, “eyes wide open” and taking “long, slow gasping breaths.” Blood was pooling in his mouth and there were “deep lacerations on his head.”
When he rolled the man onto his side, Buck told the jury that part of a handgun and a “bullet jacket” fell off his body onto the sidewalk. In his opening statement Monday, Assistant District Attorney Brian Deiderick told the jury that the defendant had pistol-whipped Alvarado-Rosado so violently that his gun broke.
Prosecution witness admits helping defendant get gun, locate Alvarado Rosado
The prosecution then called Richard Schofield, a convicted burglar serving time for a parole violation. He admitted selling drugs for the defendant’s father, who told him Alvarado-Rosado had shot him and that he “wanted it dealt with.” Schofield offered to find and kill Alvarado-Rosado himself, but the defendant, against his father’s wishes, wanted to be involved.
Using money and a car provided by the defendant’s father, Schofield said he illegally bought a 9mm handgun and located Alvarado-Rosado by driving around town. He helped the defendant buy ammunition and test fire the weapon, but went back in jail and remained there on the day Alvarado-Rosado was killed.
Schofield added that the defendant’s father had second thoughts about having Alvarado-Rosado killed, and he tried to talk the defendant out of it, including writing to him from jail, but the defendant refused, saying his father “couldn’t make the right decisions.” Schofield testified that he was in the county jail when he learned of Alvarado-Rosado’s killing, and spoke to the defendant when he was placed two cells away after being apprehended.
Alvarado-Rosado’s street name was “Daniel.” According to Schofield, the defendant admitted that he “caught Daniel walking,” shot him, pursued him when he fled, caught up, put a gun to the back of his head, shot him in the face, and pistol-whipped him.
On cross examination by Marr, Schofield, who has not been charged in connection with Alvarado-Rosado’s death, admitted he delivered drugs for the defendant’s father. He conceded that he asked detectives whether he could be charged as an accessory to murder when interviewed after Alvarado-Rosado was killed, and said they told him, “I wasn’t going to get in trouble by giving a statement.”
Marr pressed Schofield on whether he was testifying for the prosecution to avoid being charged as an accessory. “Sir, do you know how many laws you’ve broken?”
Schofield simply answered, “Yes.”
Jury sees graphic video of shooting and beating
Using extensive surveillance video from the Lebanon Middle School, together with audio from the Pennington home camera, prosecutors showed Alvarado-Rosado’s shooting from the moment the defendant approached him at 8th and Church streets, fired 20 shots at his back, pursued him as he fled south down 8th Street, then pistol-whipped him for him for over a minute as he lay motionless on the sidewalk.
The videos, some digitally enhanced, showed the attack from multiple angles, and included a sequence where the audio from the Pennington camera was synchronized with the video of the defendant firing.
Former girlfriend describes lead-up to shooting
Geraldine Segarra-Vasquez, the defendant’s girlfriend at the time, testified for the prosecution with the help of a Spanish interpreter.
She described the defendant’s mood after his father was shot as upset and sad, and that he told her he was “going to kill him when he found him,” although she did not clearly say when in relation to the shooting he said it.
She told the jury that the defendant got a gun after his father’s shooting and kept it in a bedroom dresser in his apartment.
On the night of Alvarado’s murder, they left the defendant’s apartment to buy milk and soda. The first store they stopped at was closed, so they went to a second store nearby that was open, made a purchase and exited.
Segarra-Vasquez testified that the defendant re-entered the store, came back out, made a phone call, told her “he saw the guy who killed his father,” and ran away in the direction of his apartment.
She next saw the defendant a few minutes later when she got back to the apartment. He was outside and wearing a mask, she recalled. She denied seeing a gun and said the defendant said nothing and ran past her.
Segarra-Vasquez told the jury that the defendant returned to his apartment a few minutes later with blood on his hands and a broken gun. He was out of breath.
She testified that the defendant said, “I killed him, I’m going to go back to the place I did it.” He then put the gun on the floor and left.
Feeling scared, Segarra-Vasquez said she left the defendant’s apartment and went home.
Video of the defendant and Sagarra-Vasquez at the two stores showed the defendant wearing a white hoodie and dark pants, closely resembling what other video showed Alvarado-Rosado’s shooter wearing.
Detective recalls interview of the defendant
County Detective William Walton, then working for the Lebanon P.D., testified about the interview of the defendant he and Lt. Keith Uhrich conducted two days after the murder.
Walton said he was part of the earlier investigation into the shooting of the defendant’s father, and saw evidence of drugs in his apartment. He added that “street talk” suggested that Alvarado-Rosado shot the defendant’s father, making him a suspect.
During the interview, the defendant denied any involvement in Alvarado-Rosado’s killing, insisting he was home at the time. When confronted with pieces of the broken gun, he said, “Whoever did it, did a good job.”
When it was suggested that he may have lost control when he encountered Alvarado-Rosado, Walton said the defendant replied, “I don’t know who shot my dad.” Walton added that the defendant never contacted the police about his father’s shooting.
The trial was scheduled to reconvene at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday morning.
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