Prosecutors announced they would seek the death penalty shortly after Martinez Guzman was arrested on Jan. “It is humanly impossible to suffer a tragedy of this magnitude and ever by the same,” Powning testified. Kari Powning, the Davids’ granddaughter, said she still becomes distraught whenever she sees a Reno Rodeo license plate. One of his rodeo belt buckles that Martinez Guzman sold at the Carson City pawn shop provided a key clue in the early stages of the investigation of the string of killings that had the community on edge for weeks. Both served on the rodeo association board and Jerry was a past president. The judge heard testimony from family of the Davids, who were well known in the Reno Rodeo community. “I’m happy that he’ll spend the rest of his life in prison and I hope that he spends all of that time thinking about what these family members told him today,” Hicks told the Reno Gazette Journal after Judge Connie Steinheimer sentenced him Monday in Reno. Washoe County District Attorney Chris Hicks said the decision to drop pursuit of the death penalty last fall came as a result of a direct appeal from families of the victims who didn’t want the case to continue for years longer. He invited the Davids’ daughter and great-granddaughter to attend his State of the Union address as his guests in February 2019. The case drew attention at the time from then-President Donald Trump, who said it showed the need to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. In addition to four life terms without parole, he faces more than 200 years in prison for multiple burglary, larceny, weapons and stolen property charges. Martinez Guzman had worked as a landscaper for all four victims - Jerry David, 81, and his wife, Sherri David, 80, in Reno and Constance Koontz, 56, and Sophia Renken, 74, who lived in rural Douglas County. illegally at age 16, pleaded guilty to all the crimes last year after prosecutors announced they had agreed to a plea-bargain agreement in October. Martinez Guzman, who authorities say entered the U.S. He’s scheduled to be sentenced Thursday in Douglas County for the killings of two Gardnerville women and on Friday in Carson City on charges related to property he stole from his victims and sold at a pawn shop there. (AP) - A Salvadoran immigrant has been sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for the murders of two of the four Nevada residents he admitted killing in a plea deal that spared him from a death penalty trial.Ī Washoe County district judge sentenced Wilber Ernesto Martinez Guzman, 23, on Monday for the fatal shootings of an elderly Reno couple during a two-week crime rampage in January 2019.