Yolo jury convicts man in Woodland fatal shooting who evaded capture for nine years
A Yolo County Jury on Thursday convicted a man who fired a gun at a crowd leaving a Woodland bar in 2011, killing one man and wounding several other people, prosecutors said.
The man investigators later identified as the shooter, Jose Luis Gomez Arreola, left California and evaded capture for nine years before authorities found him in Idaho last year.
The jury found Arreola, 36, of Fairfield, guilty of one count of murder, three counts of attempted murder and eight counts of assault with a gun, the Yolo County District Attorney’s Office announced in a news release Friday.
Prosecutors said Arreola faces a maximum sentence of life in prison and is scheduled to be sentenced Aug. 12 by Yolo Superior Court Judge David Reed.
Gabriel Villareal Ibarra, 30, of Williams in Colusa County, was killed in the March 6, 2011 shooting outside La Finca de Rivera Restaurant. The restaurant had a bar that hosted live music performances.
As the bar was closing, a fight broke out. Prosecutors said Arreola fired a .45 caliber semi-automatic gun outside the restaurant.
The shooting was reported about 2 a.m. in the 500 block of Bush Street, according to the Woodland Police Department. Officers arrived and found Ibarra motionless on the street and bleeding from a gunshot wound.
Medics and firefighters attempted to revive Ibarra but were unsuccessful and he died from his injuries, police said.
Arreola, during the fight, pulled out a gun and shot Ibarra, according to the Police Department. Arreola then fired off several more gunshots toward the crowd gathering, before he left the area, police officials said.
Police detectives in 2015 obtained an arrest warrant for Arreola on a charge of murder in Ibarra’s death.
Immediately after the shooting, Arreola went into hiding in Mexico, according to the District Attorney’s Office. Prosecutors said bank, Department of Motor Vehicle and employment records helped investigators find Arreola last year in Idaho.
“Those tenacious and dedicated detectives never gave up,” District Attorney Jeff Reisig said in the news release. “This is one of those successes where though justice was delayed, it was not denied.”
A few months after the fatal shooting, the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control revoked the restaurant’s liquor license. Police had received numerous reports of fights, assaults and public drunkenness, along with the shooting death, according to a news release from the state agency.
