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Raul Gomez-Garcia is accused of killing Detective Donald Young and wounding Detective John Bishop.

As jurors begin their first full day of deliberations in the second-degree murder trial of Raul Gomez-Garcia, credibility and circumstances will be their two main considerations.

Gomez-Garcia, 21, who has admitted he fired the shots that killed Denver Detective Donald Young and wounded Detective Jack Bishop, has lived in the United States for 13 years.

He has worked construction and in restaurants and had no criminal record. Yet, he received no formal education either in the United States or Mexico, he was in the United States illegally, and a semiautomatic pistol has been his constant companion since he grew up in south-central Los Angeles with a series of relatives.

He said he needed the gun in Los Angeles for self-protection.

He was illegally carrying the gun in Denver for three months, trying to avoid police because of his illegal status and because of the gun.

Ironically, the day after he killed Young and wounded Bishop, Gomez-Garcia reported to work at the Cherry Cricket restaurant, where he told jurors he did everything from preparing food to dishwashing. The restaurant is partially owned by Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, whose wife, Helen Thorpe, a journalist, has attended the trial and taken extensive notes on a daily basis.

Prosecutors Tom Clinton and Bruce Levin have told the jury that the evidence is irrefutable that Gomez-Garcia is guilty of second-degree murder in the death of Young and attempted first-degree murder of Bishop.

In fact, the two prosecutors said that what Gomez-Garcia did was "ambush", "bushwhack" and "blindside" the two defenseless officers in a cowardly act of revenge after he was ridiculed by acquaintances after being roughly ejected from the premises of a Denver social hall by Young.

In most circumstances, prosecutors in Colorado seek the death penalty any time a law enforcement officer is ambushed. But to get the Mexican government to return Gomez-Garcia to Colorado, Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey had to promise he wouldn't seek the death penalty or charge the defendant with a crime that might send him to prison for life without parole.

As a result, Morrissey brought the two other charges. If he is convicted of them, Gomez-Garcia could still receive 96 years in prison.

But Fernando Freyre and Michael Vallejos, claim that Gomez-Garcia did not intend to kill either Young or Bishop, only that he meant to hurt them.

Gomez-Garcia's credibility becomes a key issue if the jury is to buy the defense story.

A subdued, sad and sometime weepy Gomez-Garcia told the jury that his father, a Los Angeles drug dealer, had at one time been a police officer in Mexico. Although he said he had limited contact with his father when he moved to Los Angeles, being raised primarily other family members, Gomez-Garcia claimed that when his dad was a cop, he always wore bullet-proof vests. He said his father told him it was mandatory for policemen to wear the vests. And he told the jury that he believed that both Bishop and Young were wearing the vests when he shot at them.

He said he purposely aimed for their bodies because he was trying to hit the vests. He said he knew that would hurt them. But he said he wanted to embarrass them, just like Young embarrassed him when he grabbed him by the arm and throat and escorted him out of the Salon Ocampo social hall, 1733 W. Mississippi Ave., on May 8, 2005.

He said he didn't want to kill them.

But under Levin's blistering questioning, Gomez-Garcia admitted that he had never seen a vest on Bishop or Young and had no reason to believe they were wearing vests.

"I tried to shoot them so they would not die," he told Levin.

But Levin shot back: "You shot them when they were defenseless."

"Yes, I was angry and not thinking of the consequences," Gomez-Garcia said. 

On top of that, prosecutors also contended that Gomez-Garcia had repeatedly changed his story about his intentions.

When he was arrested in Mexico on June 4, 2005, U.S. Marshal Jose Chavarria, and two Mexican federal agents, Roberto Reyes-Gomez and Oswaldo Iracheta-Lopez, said that Gomez-Garcia was glad when he found out Young had died.

"He said he hoped it was the bigger one (Young) because that was the one who choked him," Chavarria testified.

Iracheta-Lopez said that Gomez-Garcia's first question was which of the Denver officers had died. When the Mexican agents told him it was the one with black hair, Gomez-Garcia said, "That's the one I wanted to die because that was the one that hurt me," Iracheta-Lopez testified.

A few days later, the two Mexican agents said that Gomez-Garcia claimed he was only shooting at the feet of Bishop and Young.

And during the final days of the trial, prosecutors Levin and Clinton hammered away at the change of stories - from Gomez-Garcia saying he was glad Young was dead, to him saying he shot at the officers' feet and finally the story about bullet-proof vests, which they claimed was absurd.

In doing so, they repeatedly reminded the jury that Gomez-Garcia was a kid that grewup on the streets of south-central Los Angeles and his dad was a drug dealer.

Although Levin did his best to shake Gomez-Garcia, the defendant - often with Levin standing inches from his face - maintained a sad, tearful, whipped-pup demeanor. He never raised his voice at the prosecutor or became angry.

Earlier, Levin had pointedly told Gomez-Garcia he wanted to show his companions he was a "tough guy' by going back and shooting the officers.

The defendant had been at a baptismal party with his common-law wife, Sandra Rivas, and their baby. Gomez-Garcia had stepped out for a minute and Young wouldn't let him back in, because he didn't have an invitation. Gomez-Garcia swore three times at the officer. That was when the physical altercation took place.

When he came back later and opened fire, Rivas and the baby were still inside.

"It was so important to you (to look tough) that you would have shot your two-week-old baby! All you cared about was proving how tough you were," Levin told Gomez-Garcia. "You wanted to show you have a sting just like the scorpion tattooed on your hand!"

Minutes before, Gomez-Garcia had apologized to the Young family.

"I feel bad, I feel bad for the family," he said. "I have to pay for what I did. I'm sorry very much. I hope they believe me."

Staff writer Howard Pankratz can be reached at 303-820-1939 or