A Marion County courtroom was unusually packed last week with supporters for a man being sentenced for a deadly shooting.

The prison sentence for Julio C. Sanchez-Sanchez came a year and a half after he shot and killed the man who molested his young relative. 

Sanchez-Sanchez, 38, of Salem, pleaded guilty on May 20 to first-degree manslaughter and unlawful use of a weapon for the shooting death of 29-year-old Ricardo Lopez-Cruz in the early hours of 2024.

Marion County Circuit Court Court Judge Daniel Wren sentenced Sanchez-Sanchez that same day to 10 years in prison. 

Police at the time shared few details about the shooting in a pair of generic press releases. The victim was found dead outside a northeast Salem nightclub, and the shooter surrendered to authorities two days later. 

Sanchez-Sanchez was born in Mexico to a family that raised cattle and farmed corn. He moved to the U.S. with his father as a teenager in 2007, met his now ex-wife and started a family. He became a U.S. citizen in 2018, according to attorney Matthew McHenry, who represented him.

He ran a construction and tree maintenance business while performing in Perlita del Sur, a band that performed carnival music and other genres in the Salem area. 

Around 2021, his wife’s distant cousin, Lopez-Cruz, moved from Mexico to stay with their family, McHenry said.

Lopez-Cruz groomed Sanchez-Sanchez’ young relative over time and once sexually assaulted the child when they were 12 years old, according to McHenry. He said the abuse “destroyed” the victim’s family.

Salem Reporter does not identify victims of child abuse.

Lopez-Cruz pleaded guilty in August 2022 in Marion County Circuit Court to attempted first-degree sexual abuse and was sentenced to a year and a half in prison.

After being released from prison, Lopez-Cruz several times followed and harassed Sanchez-Sanchez, including showing up at establishments around Salem where his band was playing and taunting him from the audience, McHenry said. Marion County prosecutors did not dispute that account.

The family felt “completely betrayed by the justice system,” McHenry said, “both for the relatively short sentence he received and for failing to protect them afterwards from his threats of intimidation.”

The night before the shooting, the two got into a shouting match at a Woodburn nightclub and had to be separated by a security guard. Lopez-Cruz told Sanchez-Sanchez that he “needed to watch out” and threatened to kill him, according to McHenry.

The next night, Sanchez-Sanchez celebrated New Year’s Eve with his girlfriend at La Leyenda Nightclub on Northeast Portland Road. 

After the club closed early the next morning, they waited outside for their Uber ride when Lopez-Cruz and some acquaintances drove into the parking lot, McHenry said. 

He said the club’s security camera footage showed Lopez-Cruz gesturing and yelling at Sanchez-Sanchez as he got into the Uber vehicle and headed off. Prosecutors did not dispute McHenry’s account.

Shortly after, Sanchez-Sanchez returned in his truck, shot Lopez-Cruz and left the scene.

Police responded around 3:15 a.m. and found Lopez-Cruz dead in the parking lot, the Salem Police Department said at the time.

Eventually, Sanchez-Sanchez contacted his priest, who helped arrange for him to turn himself in to the Roseburg Police Department. He was charged with second-degree murder and transferred to the Marion County Jail, where he remained for over a year and a half. 

Sanchez-Sanchez’ girlfriend at the time, Guadalupe Ortiz-Cervantes, 35, of Woodburn, was also charged with hindering prosecution, accused of helping him hide from authorities. Her case is still pending.

At the sentencing hearing on May 20, Sanchez-Sanchez spoke through a Spanish interpreter. “I would like to ask forgiveness regarding what happened. I want to ask forgiveness to society and my family. That’s it.”

Judge Daniel Wren said the court can’t offer him forgiveness. “We have rules and laws,” he said. “I don’t even necessarily have a lot of leeway, quite frankly.”

No one spoke at the hearing on behalf of Lopez-Cruz, the shooting victim.

The judge imposed the 10-year sentence that Marion County prosecutors and McHenry negotiated. He gave Sanchez-Sanchez credit for his time served in jail and sentenced him to three years of post-prison supervision.

Wren wished Sanchez-Sanchez good luck and said he was grateful to see so many people in the courtroom.

“It is a testament to how people support him,” the judge said. “That support’s going to go a long ways as he navigates these next years while he’s incarcerated.”

Contact reporter Ardeshir Tabrizian: [email protected] or 503-929-3053.

A MOMENT MORE, PLEASE– If you found this story useful, consider subscribing to Salem Reporter if you don’t already. Work such as this, done by local professionals, depends on community support from subscribers. Please take a moment and sign up now – easy and secure: SUBSCRIBE.