EVERETT — All three suspects in a Yakima Valley homicide have been arrested in Snohomish County.
The men are charged with murdering Joe Fuller, 44, of Granger, who was run off a rural road east of his Yakima County hometown and shot to death in revenge for a “drug deal that went bad,” according to charges filed in Yakima County Superior Court in April.
Jaime Herrera, 24, sent texts to Fuller threatening to kill him in the days before the shooting, court papers say. Early on April 12, he asked a woman to make a deal to buy meth from Fuller, prosecutors allege.
It was a setup. Fuller picked up the woman at a gas station in his Honda Accord in the town of 3,700 people southeast of Yakima. They drove along a riverside road around 6:30 a.m. A dark SUV followed, then rammed the Honda into a knee-deep irrigation canal.
The woman later told detectives she heard rapid gunfire as she got out the crashed car.
Fuller was shot in the neck. Bullet casings from two guns were recovered at the scene — one a caliber commonly fired by a pistol, another a caliber commonly fired by a rifle.
Detectives believe Herrera’s father, Marcos Herrera, 46, was driving the SUV.
From security video at the gas station, police identified a passenger in the car as Hector Garcia-Ceja Jr., 24, of Everett.
Garcia-Ceja, who has tattoos on his face, had gone into the store to pay for gas with coins, according to the court papers. He was arrested on April 23 in Edmonds after a wild car chase through Everett, onto I-5, then south to Edmonds. The car reached triple-digit speeds on the freeway shoulder as it blazed past rush-hour traffic that afternoon.
Police believe Garcia-Ceja was a passenger in the high-speed pursuit.
Police pursued this car April 23 during a high-speed chase from Everett to Edmonds on I-5. After the chase, police arrested the suspected driver and Hector Garcia-Ceja Jr., 24, of Everett. (Chuck Taylor / The Herald)
The suspected driver, 39, of Sunnyside, is in the Snohomish County Jail with bail set at $100,000. Court papers say he denied leading police on the chase. He claimed he had been at a Starbucks in Edmonds. A witness, however, told police he watched him run from the car.
The three defendants in the homicide have been charged with first-degree murder with a deadly weapon.
Jaime Herrera was arrested in Lynnwood when authorities pulled him over, Yakima County sheriff’s spokesman Casey Schilperoort said. The younger Herrera was booked into the Yakima County Jail late Wednesday.
His father was arrested in the Everett area and booked into the Snohomish County on April 24. His record shows convictions for first-degree robbery and drug crimes.
About 1½ years before the killing, Marcos Herrera was pulled over while driving a black Lexus with expired tabs on Airport Road near Everett, charging papers say.
Under and between the seats, deputies found more than 10 grams of a substance that tested positive for meth.
Months later, he missed a court date, and a warrant was issued for his arrest.
He’s being held in Snohomish County until that case can be resolved.
Caleb Hutton: 425-339-3454; chutton@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @snocaleb.
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