A Salem man has been charged with murder in the shooting death of a man found dead on Jan. 25 in Salem’s Southeast Mill Creek neighborhood.
Prosecutors charged Ismael E. Ventura-Arellano, 21, on Thursday in Marion County Circuit Court with second-degree murder and possessing a firearm as a felon, according to court records.
He is accused of shooting and killing 23-year-old Jesus Ramos-Torres of Salem, who was found dead on southeast Cordon Road.
Ventura-Arellano has been held in the Marion County Jail since he was arrested on Feb. 5 for driving under the influence on Cordon Road, according to a probation violation report.
Eleven days earlier, a Marion County sheriff’s deputy responded around 1:30 a.m. to a report of gunfire in the 1100 block of Cordon Road and found a vehicle blocking the roadway.
The driver was dead, the Salem Police Department said in a news release at the time.
The Salem agency took over the investigation and closed Cordon Road for around six hours between Southeast Macleay and Caplinger roads.
On Feb. 5 just before 3 a.m., a Marion County sheriff’s deputy pulled over Ventura-Arellano as he was driving down Cordon Road without headlights, according to a probation violation report. He appeared intoxicated and admitted to drinking, the report said.
He was arrested and charged with driving under the influence of intoxicants.
Ventura-Arellano’s probation officer last August suspected that he was keeping two guns at an apartment and “likely dealing cocaine out of that same apartment,” the officer reported.
Police searched the apartment and a vehicle. They found 11 grams of cocaine, a box with ammunition, six loaded magazines including a drum magazine and two guns.
A Marion County Grand Jury indicted him in October on two counts of illegally possessing cocaine and possessing a firearm as a felon.
Ventura-Arellano also has two pending counts of attempting to elude police in an earlier case.
He has previous criminal convictions dating back to 2021 for illegally possessing a firearm in two cases, court records showed.
More court proceedings in the murder case are scheduled for March 1.
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UPDATE: Police identify man found dead with gunshot wound on SE Cordon Road
Contact reporter Ardeshir Tabrizian: [email protected] or 503-929-3053.
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Ardeshir Tabrizian has covered criminal justice and housing for Salem Reporter since September 2021. As an Oregon native, his award-winning watchdog journalism has traversed the state. He has done reporting for The Oregonian, Eugene Weekly and Malheur Enterprise.
