SAN ANTONIO – The murder trial of Laura Flores-Messick, the 32-year-old woman accused of shooting her boyfriend to death and slashing his neck with a kitchen knife, began with a police officer's gripping body camera video of the bloody scene.
When Rachel Paniagua's son, Chason Montez-Deoca, 40, didn’t return her phone calls on the morning of June 11, 2017, she became concerned. She went to his home in the 7600 block of Muleshoe where she found his bloody body lying in a hallway.
Paniagua called police, who escorted her from the home as she begged, “I just want to hold him.”
The crime scene unfolded before the jury via the body camera video of one of the first police officers to arrive.
The couple had a stormy, tumultuous relationship, both prosecutors and the defense agreed.
At the crime scene, Paniagua told police, “They were arguing last night. I told her (Flores-Messick) had to go and to leave my son alone. She was causing problems.”
Prosecutors told the jury that Flores-Messick admitted to shooting Montez-Deoca and slitting his throat. She said that he had a gun, and when he left it on the table, she picked it up and pointed it at him.
“He taunts her, saying, ‘You won’t do it,'" prosecutor Talia Triesh told the jury. “(Flores-Messick) says she shoots him while he is in the bathroom, and he is in the hallway.”
When asked about the stab wounds on Montez-Deoca’s neck, Triesh said, “(Flores-Messick) says, 'I didn’t know if he was dead, so I used a kitchen knife to cut him,' thinking of him at the time, ‘What an (expletive deleted). What a jerk.'”
During his opening statement Flores-Messick’s lawyer, Edward Garza, agreed that the couple had a stormy relationship and said both were guilty of what he called misconduct.
Testimony is expected to continue Thursday in Judge Catherine Torres-Stahl’s 175th District Court.
A conviction could mean a maximum of life in prison for Flores-Messick.