RENO, Nev.: A Salvadoran immigrant who admitted fatally shooting four people during a crime spree in northern Nevada in January 2019 pleaded guilty Tuesday to the last two killings in rural Douglas County as part of an overall deal with prosecutors that will spare him from the death penalty.
Wilber Ernesto Martinez Guzman, 22, will spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole after pleading guilty to first-degree murder with a deadly weapon in the deaths of Connie Koontz and Sophia Renken at their homes in Gardnerville south of Carson City.
Martinez Guzman pleaded guilty Oct. 21 to the same charges in the deaths of Gerald and Sharon David in their Reno home.
That move, and announcement by prosecutors that a deal had been struck regarding all four killings, came as a surprise in a legal proceeding that had dragged on for nearly two years and was likely to continue years longer.
District Attorneys Chris Hicks of Washoe County and Mark Jackson of Douglas County initially planned one death penalty trial for Martinez Guzman in Reno. But the Nevada Supreme Court ruled Sept. 30 that the defendant would have to be tried separately in the two county jurisdictions.
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