10 years in Sultan gang slaying
Published 10:36 pm Tuesday, December 22, 2009
EVERETT — For the third time in less than a week, a young man stood up in a Snohomish County courtroom and was ordered to spend years behind bars for a gang-related killing.
Adolfo Castillo, 17, was sentenced Tuesday to 10 years in prison for his role in the beating and stabbing death of another teen on a Sultan street.
Castillo earlier pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the death of Antonio Marks, 17. The defendant’s brother, Marco Castillo, 20, was sentenced Monday to 15 years for his role.
The difference in punishment reflected the brothers’ differing levels of involvement in what by all reports was an ambush attack.
A video surveillance camera captured the June 17 slaying. The 43-second recording showed Marks being felled with a punch to the head, then kicked repeatedly and stabbed several times.
The stabbing and the initial blows were instigated by Marco Castillo, the acknowledged leader of a small gang that was based in Sultan, Snohomish County deputy prosecutor Tobin Darrow said. By contrast, the video captured how the then-16-year-old Adolfo Castillo and three other young people stood by, almost at attention, waiting for the order to wade in and begin kicking the victim, the prosecutor said.
While Adolfo Castillo clearly was following his older brother’s lead, his participation can’t be ignored, Darrow said.
Adolfo Castillo’s attorney, Jon Scott of Mill Creek, said that the gang connections to the killing only tell part of the story. His client put allegiance to his brother above what was best for him and now will have years to reflect on the consequences, the lawyer said.
“He’s followed his older brother’s footsteps to this point, in this courtroom,” Scott said.
Marks’ mother, Angelina Reyes, told Snohomish County Superior Court Judge Ronald Castleberry that her son was not a gang member. Instead, she said, he was just a kid who managed to get entangled with the wrong folks and lost his chance to fulfill his dreams of completing his education.
Prosecutors say Marks ran with members of a rival gang from south Snohomish County and for a time dated Castillo’s sister. Marks also knew Robert Langendoerfer, 22, the gang member from Edmonds who on Friday was sentenced to 13 years in prison for the killing of a Seattle teenager. Britney Galindez’s body was found in October 2008, floating in a Mountlake Terrace lake.
As they had done the day before, Marks’ family urged the judge to impose a life sentence.
That wasn’t a legal option, Castleberry said. Although the murder charge mandated that Adolfo Castillo be prosecuted as an adult, he had no previous felony history. Under state sentencing guidelines, the maximum punishment was about 18 years in prison.
Castleberry said the law required him to consider all the facts and to arrive at “some degree of justice.”
Security was beefed up during Tuesday’s sentencing. People in both families spoke in court of receiving threats.
Castleberry said he worried about the potential for more harm.
“When does the violence stop?” he asked.
Sentencing is scheduled next month for Ivette Rico, 18, and Jaime Santana, 16. Both have pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. Another defendant, Ana Cary Ayala Bustos, 16, faces a March trial.
Scott North: 425-339-3431, north@heraldnet.com.
