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Lynwood Murder: Meth Fueled Accident Or Cold Blooded Killing?

Matt Hamilton |
September 24, 2013 | 3:24 a.m. PDT

Staff Reporter

Selene Mayoral wanted to spend the night at a guy’s home - a coworker whom she called a friend, un amigo

Her mother objected. Selene went anyway.

One night later, Selene was tossed from a Mercury coupe, limp and bloodied from the single bullet that had traveled through her head, shattering the glass of the car’s passenger window.

The dead body of the 24-year-old from Cudahy lay on the pavement. The pile of flesh was only visible as the convoy of squad cars sped by – flashes of blue and red – as the pursuit of the green Cougar continued through Lynwood.

Behind the wheel: Juan Diego Valencia. Selene’s coworker, her amigo.

Valencia, 31, is charged with fatally shooting Selene on the night of September 6, 2012, before dumping her body and leading police on a multi-city chase that ended with him barricaded inside his Hawthorne apartment.

If convicted, Valencia faces up to life in prison.

A former warehouse worker for Carson-based Kenwood, Valencia sat in Los Angeles Superior Court Monday as lawyers for both sides made opening statements in his murder trial. 

Defense attorneys told jurors in a Compton courtroom that the basic facts of the case are not contested: a gunshot killed Selene as she sat with Valencia in his car, pulled over by a L.A. County Sheriff’s deputy who stopped the car for not using a turn signal. A video camera recorded Valencia dumping Selene’s body. And Valencia, hours later, surrendered to the SWAT officers who surrounded his home.

“The question is: how did it happen?” said Francine Logan, Valencia’s attorney.

Logan said her client and Selene were high on crystal meth. The gun went off as the couple rushed to hide drug paraphernalia in the car from the Sheriff’s deputy. High and afraid, her client fled. Unable to drive with Selene’s dead body in the car, he dumped it, Logan said. 

“[Valencia] never intended for this to happen,” Logan said. “It was an accident.”

But prosecutors told a different story. Pointing to text messages and phone calls between Selene and her mother, Dep. Dist. Attorney Antonio Aguilar said Valencia had earlier in the day locked her up, preventing her from leaving. And after killing her, Valencia – a reputed gang member - dumped her dead body in a rival gang’s territory.

Aguilar told jurors that the bullet was not accidental, but instead came in to her head at a 10-degree angle – from the left side to the right, powerful enough to puncture a nearby wrought-iron gate. 

“This was a murder,” Aguilar said.

Later, the prosecution’s first witness took the stand: Selene’s mother, Graciela Mayoral.

Sobbing and clutching a rosary, Mayoral narrated, with the help of a translator, her daughter’s final days.

The 47-year-old conceded that her daughter struggled with crystal meth before – but she had completed rehab more than five years ago. 

On the day of the killing, Mayoral said her daughter had asked to be picked up – but Selene didn’t know the address. All she told her mother was the closest intersection, 139th Street and Chadron Avenue in Hawthorne. 

Mayoral’s husband went to locate Selene – but wasn’t successful. Simultaneously, communications with her daughter became worrisome, she said.

Selene later told her mother she was locked in a dark room, unable to leave. One of the men was named Juan, Selene said. Mayoral heard conversations back and forth, and at one point, heard screams.

Frantic, Mayoral joined her husband at the Hawthorne intersection that her daughter told her to come to. 

It was the same intersection where, hours later, Valencia would lead Sheriff’s deputies before hopping out of his Mercury and running into his one-bedroom apartment.

Mayoral said she and her husband ran up and down the street, yelling for Selene. 

It was a last ditch effort before calling police. To her daughter, she sent text messages – something she’d been doing all afternoon. Selene answered back only occasionally.

Mayoral sent her last text message at 8:11 p.m.

Hija, estoy aqui. Sal.

Daughter, I’m here. Come out.

No reply ever came.

Reach staff reporter Matt Hamilton here and follow him on Twitter here.



 

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