EVERETT — Linda Nguyen didn’t want to work in a nail salon forever.
She hoped to save enough money to go to school. She wanted to become a nurse.
Her older brother convinced her and her boyfriend, Kevin Meas, they could make a lot of money in Everett. A drug trafficker was willing to pay the couple thousands of dollars to tend an indoor marijuana-growing operation.
Two months later Nguyen, 20, and Meas, 24, were gunned down inside the north Everett house where they tended an elaborate indoor pot farm.
Prosecutors have called the slayings executions.
Nguyen was shot in the face and head at close range. Meas also was shot in the face and head, as well as the shoulder.
A Snohomish County jury on Wednesday began deliberations in the trial of one of the men charged in the killings.
Areewa Saray, 21, of Tacoma, faces a lifetime behind bars if convicted of aggravated murder. Under alternate theories of the case, he is charged with four counts of murder, including two counts of premeditated murder.
Snohomish County deputy prosecutor Matthew Baldock on Wednesday called the young man a cold-blooded killer.
Baldock told the jury Saray and co-defendant Sarouen Phai planned to rob the couple because they’d heard the Dexter Avenue house hid a large number of marijuana plants and likely thousands of dollars in drug money.
The pair also planned to kill the people living there, Baldock said.
“There is evidence of cold-blooded executions,” he said.
In his interview with police, Saray smiled, laughed, burped and passed gas, Baldock recounted to jurors. He questioned the man’s reaction at being accused of a double killing.
“I would submit the translation would be this: Prove it,” Baldock said. “That’s what we have done over the last several days in this courtroom.”
Witnesses testified that Saray and Phai both discussed their plans with others before they drove up to Everett, barged into the house and shot Nguyen as she opened the front door and then gunned down Meas in the basement, Baldock said.
The home’s landlord identified Saray as the man he saw inside the house when he came to collect rent on July 2, 2007, and apparently interrupted the crime, the deputy prosecutor said. Police recovered two guns off a pier near Des Moines, where another witness reported seeing Saray dump the weapons, Baldock said.
The men talked of carrying out the crimes near the Fourth of July, predicting their gunfire in the quiet neighborhood could be chalked up to fireworks, Baldock said.
Defense attorney Stephen Garvey told jurors prosecutors failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Saray was responsible for the killings. Prosecutors proved two murders happened but they didn’t provide jurors with concrete evidence that Saray was the one who shot Nguyen and Meas, Garvey said.
The only way prosecutors connected his client to the killings was through the testimony of witnesses who were persuaded to testify against Saray to avoid being prosecuted themselves, Garvey said.
Two of the key witnesses were implicated in the shootings, he said. One helped destroy evidence and another provided a gun and agreed to drive the getaway car, Garvey said.
The landlord, meanwhile, was aware of the drug operation.
They all have motive to point the finger at Saray, he said.
“The three witnesses who implicated him have been bought and are awaiting payment,” Garvey said.
He encouraged jurors to consider that they must live with their decisions for the rest of their lives. He urged them to acquit Saray.
Jurors are expected to return today to continue deliberating.
Reporter Diana Hefley: 425-339-3463 or hefley@heraldnet.com.
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