Michael Keetley, convicted of two counts of murder and four counts of attempted murder in March, will be sentenced on Friday. The jury found Keetley guilty after deliberating over three days. Richard Escobar, another member of the defense, argued that law enforcement made multiple mistakes after the 2010 attack, saying “the investigation that followed was nothing short of a nightmare itself.” He is not medically capable,” defense attorney John Grant said during trial. Michael Keetley did not do it, he could not do it. “This is our defense, Michael Keetley is not guilty because he did not do it. The defense argued the survivors of the shooting identified the wrong man and that Keetley was not capable of committing the attack because of injuries he sustained when he was shot and robbed months earlier. Guevara said he told police he was “2,000% sure that he was the guy that shot me” and pointed out Keetley as his assailant in the courtroom. He said he began “crying and shaking” when he saw Keetley’s photo because he recognized the man from the attack. Guevara said he identified a photo of Keetley to police as the man he saw shoot him and his friends. Clifford / Tampa Bay Times via ZUMA / Alamyĭuring emotional testimony, survivors of the shooting described how a man ambushed them as they were playing poker and drinking beer on the porch in Ruskin.
#Trucker lingo flagtown trial#
Defense attorney John Grant describes the scene of a shooting on Thanksgiving morning in 2010 while delivering opening statements during the murder trial for Michael Keetley. “It was a very excruciating 12 years and two trials later,” Cantu's brother, Frankie Cantu, said, while alongside his brother. Richard Cantu, a cousin of the Guitrons who was shot in the head during the attack, believes, along with his family, that justice has finally been served as they await Keetley's sentencing.Ĭantu suffered brain damage as a result of his injury and has had to relearn to walk and talk, while his family waited more than a decade and endured a 2020 trial that ended with a hopelessly deadlocked jury. Quezada said the attack devastated her family and the lives of the others who were severely wounded. They were also responsible and hardworking. Sergio worked for a medical parts company and Juan worked for a sofa company, Quezada said. On Mother’s Day, her sons would send flowers to her at her job, she said.
Sergio loved to cook, she said, making fajitas, hamburgers and carne asada. They still lived at home together and Quezada said her sons liked to have friends and cousins over for cookouts. “The three of us were like one person,” she said. She recalled that after the funeral when the three were alone, they cried, held hands “and made a pact to be united, always,” she said. Quezada said she and her sons were inseparable, especially after the death of the boy’s father a few years earlier. They didn’t hurt anyone,” said Quezada, who tightly clutched a cross necklace that once belonged to Sergio as a guilty verdict was read more than 12 years after her sons were killed. Ivy Ceballo / Tampa Bay Times via ZUMA / Alamy Paz Quezada holds a photo of her with her sons, Juan and Sergio Guitron. Nor did the man nicknamed Creeper, who was not among the six men shot at the house in Ruskin, police said. The people killed and injured had nothing to do with Keetley’s robbery, prosecutors said. His revenge plot culminated in a deadly case of mistaken identity. Prosecutors said Keetley began his own investigation, coming to the false conclusion that a man nicknamed “Creeper” was behind the robbery.
Keetley had been frustrated with law enforcement’s investigation of the robbery, prosecutors said, which left him wounded and in need of physical therapy.
He faces life in prison without parole.ĭuring the trial, prosecutors said Keetley had become obsessed with revenge after he was robbed and shot while on his ice cream route about a year before the murders. Michael Keetley, a former ice cream truck driver, was convicted in March of two counts of murder and four counts of attempted murder in the attacks. Paz Quezada, the mother of Juan and Sergio Guitron, after a guilty verdict was read in the retrial of Michael Keetley in Tampa, Fla., on March 28. Juan Guitron, 28, and Sergio Guitron, 22, were fatally shot, and four others were severely wounded in November 2010 on the front porch of a home in Ruskin, Florida, where family and friends had gathered to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday. She said she prayed for the strength to live to see the day her sons would have justice. “I keep fighting for my sons. “It’s the best gift God could give me,” Quezada, told NBC News through tears.
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