For the second time this year, a Dallas County jury will decide whether a Garland man is responsible for a fatal armed robbery at a convenience store.
Luis Espinoza, 21, is accused of being one of two masked men who held up the Corner Store on west Walnut in Garland on May 22, 2019. In February, another jury convicted codefendant Emmanuel Martinez. His sentence was an automatic life, without any chance for parole.
Clerk Heng Lam was on duty the night of the robbery when two masked men burst in, fired shots, grabbed cash, and fled on foot.
Cain Rolden, a friend of Lam and a store employee, told the jury the men were wearing masks and speaking in Spanish as they stormed the store and ordered both clerks on the floor. Rolden said he complied. As he was getting on the floor, he heard at least two shots.
“You thought it was, maybe warning shots, to scare Heng?” prosecutor Caitlin Paver asked. “Yes, at first when I was on the floor, yes,” Rolden said. He learned Lam was shot after the bandits fled and his friend was on the floor bleeding.
Police who responded said the two robbers fled in such a hurry there was money blowing through the parking lot of the convenience store.
A former friend of Espinoza’s testified that he loaned Espinoza a sweatshirt and a gun, but was not immediately aware of the shooting. Jairo Medina-Miranda said Espinoza returned from the store, about 10-houses away, and threw the sweatshirt and gun in the back of his pickup truck.
Defense attorney Steven Hayden suggested Medina-Miranda, who is jailed on a probation violation, may have an interest in fibbing.
“Maybe that’s because it’s Emmanuel wearing the Cowboy’s outfit and maybe that’s you standing up there in those purple gloves,” Hayden said. “No sir.” Replied Medina-Miranda.
If Espinoza is convicted he would also receive an automatic sentence of life without parole.
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