{"id":2334,"date":"2013-07-25T08:32:31","date_gmt":"2013-07-25T12:32:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.legalinfo.com\/legal-news\/?p=2334"},"modified":"2013-08-13T11:33:24","modified_gmt":"2013-08-13T15:33:24","slug":"surprise-plea-deal-for-hells-angel-member","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.legalinfo.com\/legal-news\/surprise-plea-deal-for-hells-angel-member.html","title":{"rendered":"Surprise Plea Deal for Hells-Angel Member"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"_mcePaste\" style=\"position: absolute; left: -10000px; top: 0px; width: 1px; height: 1px; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden;\">Man Accused of Murder Strikes Unexpected Plea Deal<\/div>\n<div id=\"_mcePaste\" style=\"position: absolute; left: -10000px; top: 0px; width: 1px; height: 1px; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden;\">In July 2013, Cesar Villagrana, 38, entered two surprise pleas in Eno, Nevada\u2019s Washoe District Court. Villagrana pled guilty to a charge of battery with a deadly weapon, and a charge of challenging to fight with a deadly weapon. Had he not accepted this plea bargain, Villagrana, a resident of Gilroy, Calif., and a member of the Hells Angels criminal motorcycle gang, would have gone on trial for second-degree murder and other charges, and he might have received a life sentence in prison.<\/div>\n<div id=\"_mcePaste\" style=\"position: absolute; left: -10000px; top: 0px; width: 1px; height: 1px; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden;\">The incident for which Villagrana was arrested took place on Friday, September 23, 2011, in a bar named Trader Dick\u2019s, located inside John Ascuaga\u2019s Nugget, a Sparks, Nev., casino. Villagrana and his friend Jeffrey \u201cJethro\u201d Pettigrew, leader of the San Jose Hells Angels branch, were in town for a motorcycle festival called Street Vibrations.<\/div>\n<div id=\"_mcePaste\" style=\"position: absolute; left: -10000px; top: 0px; width: 1px; height: 1px; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden;\">At 11:30 p.m., a fight broke out between the Hells Angels and members of a rival motorcycle gang called Vagos. Video surveillance footage shows Villagrana removing a gun &#8212; later determined to be a stolen, semi-automatic Smith &amp; Wesson &#8212; from his waistband and shooting into a crowd. Some of the people he shot at were not gang members and not even involved in the fight; many ducked beneath craps tables. After this shooting, Pettigrew lay bleeding from bullets and stab wounds in his torso. He later died in a local hospital. In addition, Leonard Ramirez and Diego Garcia, two Vagos members, suffered non-fatal gunshot injuries. Police were dispatched to the scene, and a supervisor ordered Villagrana to drop his gun, which he did.<\/div>\n<div id=\"_mcePaste\" style=\"position: absolute; left: -10000px; top: 0px; width: 1px; height: 1px; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden;\">Villagrana was the only person arrested at the scene, although police later arrested San Francisco\u2019s Ernesto Gonzalez, a Vagos member. Gonzalez, incidentally, went to trial and was found guilty of murder in August 2013. Following the shootout, the city of Sparks cancelled the 2011 Street Vibrations; authorities also declared a state of emergency for a 24-hour period.<\/div>\n<div id=\"_mcePaste\" style=\"position: absolute; left: -10000px; top: 0px; width: 1px; height: 1px; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden;\">Villagrana\u2019s sentencing will take place on September 4, 2013. He could receive a maximum of 15 years in prison, as well as a $15,000 fine. <span style=\"white-space: pre;\"> <\/span><\/div>\n<div>Man Accused of Murder Strikes Unexpected Plea Deal<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>In July 2013, Cesar Villagrana, 38, entered two surprise pleas in Eno, Nevada\u2019s Washoe District Court. Villagrana pled guilty to a charge of battery with a deadly weapon, and a charge of challenging to fight with a deadly weapon. Had he not accepted this plea bargain, Villagrana, a resident of Gilroy, Calif., and a member of the Hells Angels criminal motorcycle gang, would have gone on trial for second-degree murder and other charges, and he might have received a life sentence in prison.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>The incident for which Villagrana was arrested took place on Friday, September 23, 2011, in a bar named Trader Dick\u2019s, located inside John Ascuaga\u2019s Nugget, a Sparks, Nev., casino. Villagrana and his friend Jeffrey \u201cJethro\u201d Pettigrew, leader of the San Jose Hells Angels branch, were in town for a motorcycle festival called Street Vibrations.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>At 11:30 p.m., a fight broke out between the Hells Angels and members of a rival motorcycle gang called Vagos. Video surveillance footage shows Villagrana removing a gun &#8212; later determined to be a stolen, semi-automatic Smith &amp; Wesson &#8212; from his waistband and shooting into a crowd. Some of the people he shot at were not gang members and not even involved in the fight; many ducked beneath craps tables. After this shooting, Pettigrew lay bleeding from bullets and stab wounds in his torso. He later died in a local hospital. In addition, Leonard Ramirez and Diego Garcia, two Vagos members, suffered non-fatal gunshot injuries. Police were dispatched to the scene, and a supervisor ordered Villagrana to drop his gun, which he did.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Villagrana was the only person arrested at the scene, although police later arrested San Francisco\u2019s Ernesto Gonzalez, a Vagos member. Gonzalez, incidentally, went to trial and was found guilty of murder in August 2013. Following the shootout, the city of Sparks cancelled the 2011 Street Vibrations; authorities also declared a state of emergency for a 24-hour period.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Villagrana\u2019s sentencing will take place on September 4, 2013. He could receive a maximum of 15 years in prison, as well as a $15,000 fine.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Man Accused of Murder Strikes Unexpected Plea Deal In July 2013, Cesar Villagrana, 38, entered two surprise pleas in Eno, Nevada\u2019s Washoe District Court. Villagrana pled guilty to a charge of battery with a deadly weapon, and a charge of challenging to fight with a deadly weapon. Had he not accepted this plea bargain, Villagrana, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-default"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.legalinfo.com\/legal-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.legalinfo.com\/legal-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.legalinfo.com\/legal-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.legalinfo.com\/legal-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.legalinfo.com\/legal-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2334"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.legalinfo.com\/legal-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2335,"href":"https:\/\/www.legalinfo.com\/legal-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2334\/revisions\/2335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.legalinfo.com\/legal-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.legalinfo.com\/legal-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.legalinfo.com\/legal-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}