Chavez-Beltran guilty in shooting death
By Terry Murry on Thursday, March 4th, 2021 in Columbia Basin News More Top Stories
WALLA WALLA – A Walla Walla County Superior Court jury has found Edgar Chavez-Beltran guilty of second-degree murder in the shooting death of a coworker Leopoldo Nunez Parra in October 2019 at the farm where they worked in Wallula. It took the jury four hours to reach a verdict.
As with all serious crimes, an investigation by the Washington Department of Corrections must be completed before sentencing can be scheduled. That takes about six weeks. The normal sentence for second-degree murder with a firearm can be more than 20 years.
Chavez-Beltran claimed he acted in self-defense. The jury didn’t buy that argument. When he was originally arraigned for the crime, court records indicate that he shot Parra multiple times. When Walla Walla County Sheriff’s deputies arrived at the scene, they found the victim in the driver’s seat of a truck that was still in drive with the motor running. He had at least one gunshot wound to the face.
During questioning by deputies, Chavez-Beltran said he believed he shot Parra 11 times after he felt the victim was reaching for a pistol the suspect was carrying in his waistband.
