Drive-by Shooter to Receive New Prison Sentence in December

A former Centralia High School student with a 92-year prison sentence for a 2007 gang-related shooting will wait a few additional months to see if a Lewis County judge will give him a shorter prison term after his attorney requested the resentencing date be pushed back to December.

Guadalupe Solis-Diaz Jr. was 16 when he sprayed bullets along the east side of Tower Avenue in downtown Centralia on Aug. 11, 2007, at people standing outside the Hub and Tower taverns. He did not hit anyone, but the violence was reportedly in retaliation for an altercation between a Centralia man and the street gang Little Valley Lokotes. The shooting was one of several that happened during the summer of 2007.

Six years ago, after a jury trial, Superior Court Judge Nelson Hunt sentenced Solis-Diaz to 1,111 months, approximately 92.5 years, in prison.

Last fall, the court of appeals ruled Solis-Diaz’s defense attorney was ineffective during the teen’s sentencing hearing and ordered that he be resentenced.

Solis-Diaz was transported from the Walla Walla state prison back to the Lewis County Jail last January to await a new resentencing hearing, which has been pushed back multiple times since then.

During Wednesday’s court hearing, Solis-Diaz’s court-appointed, Olympia-based attorney, Robert Quillian, requested the judge authorize a payment of $6,000 for a expert witness, Dr. Ron Roesch, from Simon Fraser University. 

Roesch would provide testimony about Solis-Diaz’s maturity level as well as recidivism rates in juvenile offenders, Quillian told the judge. 

The expert witness Quillian requested is a university professor based out of Vancouver, British Columbia, who specializes in juvenile criminal work. 

“He’s exactly the type of expert we need in this case,” Quillian told the judge.

Hunt, the same judge who gave Solis-Diaz his initial sentence six years ago, said he was reluctant to approve the hiring of an expert witness who would earn “more than twice” the amount of money testifying at one hearing than the public defender, who represented Solis-Diaz initially, earned for the entire trial.

The court-appointed attorney, Hunt said, earned about $75 an hour. Roesch charges $200 an hour.

At the end of the 30-minute hearing, Hunt tentatively agreed he would be willing to consider approving funds for the expert if he submitted a written report of his findings, as opposed to traveling down from Canada to testify in person, which would cut down the costs.

With his current 92-year sentence, Solis-Diaz, now 23, will be released from prison at age 103, if granted the six years of discretionary so-called good time.

Solis-Diaz’s sentence was the high-end of the standard sentencing range for the six counts of first-degree assault, one count of drive-by shooting, and one count of second-degree of unlawful possession of a firearm.

Under state law, each count of first-degree assault came with a consecutive sentence and carried an additional five years of prison time because they were committed with a firearm.

Hunt, the judge who sentenced Solis-Diaz initially, will also decide his new sentence. Both the defense and prosecution said they have not decided what they will recommend at the resentencing hearing.

For his resentencing hearing, Solis-Diaz faces the same sentencing range as he did before, which is between 77 and 93 years.

Solis-Diaz will remain in the custody of the Lewis County Jail until his resentencing hearing on Dec. 17.