Nearly 24 years after couple and toddler gunned down in Normal Heights, trial starts for accused gunman

It’s been nearly 24 years since a young couple and a toddler were shot to death in a Normal Heights apartment. On Wednesday, a San Diego Superior Court jury got its first look at the criminal case against the accused shooter.

The prosecutor told the panel during trial opening statements that the defendant sprayed gunfire into the apartment over a $30 methamphetamine debt. The defendant’s attorney countered that there is no evidence tying his client to the killings other than the word of untrustworthy witnesses.

Sergio Lopez Contreras, 45, is charged with murder for the Sept. 4, 2000, shootings of Michael Plummer, 20; Plummer’s girlfriend, Adah Pearson, 18; and Plummer’s nephew, Julio Rangel Jr., who was about 22 months old.

Contreras was 22 at the time of the shooting. San Diego police alleged he fled to Mexico, where he was arrested years later on unrelated charges. Prosecutors filed murder charges against him in 2007, and he was extradited to San Diego last year.

The prosecution alleges the shooting was sparked because Plummer owed Contreras money for drugs. Deputy District Attorney Chris Lindberg told jurors that Contreras fired 16 shots from a rifle while at the front door of the Bancroft Street apartment. Plummer was hit a dozen times.

Pearson was sleeping on the couch when she was shot. Another bullet pierced the wall behind her and struck the toddler, who was asleep in a bedroom with his parents and a sibling, Lindberg said.

Plummer died at the scene. Pearson and the toddler were were taken to hospitals, where they died.

According to Lindberg, one of the apartment’s occupants said in a 911 call after the shooting that the gunman was a Latino man in his 20s who was seen in a blue Oldsmobile, the same type of car Contreras had been seen riding in with a woman he was dating at the time. The 911 caller also said that woman had brought the shooter over to their apartment, according to the prosecutor.

A friend of Contreras’, Victor Calderon, was also present during the killings and was inadvertently shot in the arm by Contreras, Lindberg alleged. A blood trail leading away from the shooting scene was later identified as Calderon’s blood.

While the case initially went cold, Calderon discussed the shooting with police in 2005 while incarcerated in Alabama, Lindberg said. Calderon has since died while in prison.

Other witnesses also say they overheard Contreras and Calderon discussing details of the shooting, including how Calderon was shot because he “got in the way.”

Contreras’ defense attorney, Neil Besse, said Contreras sold Plummer drugs and was never paid, but denied that Contreras went back to confront Plummer.

Besse told jurors that no witness would be able to definitively say they saw Contreras fire the rifle, and that no forensic evidence, cellphone evidence or DNA would tie Contreras to the scene of the killings.

The defense attorney said the bulk of the case against his client relied on accusations from Calderon and others who had reasons to lie.

Besse said Calderon was arrested and convicted in 2005 for driving drunk, leading police on a chase, and killing another person in the process. He was set to be sentenced for the vehicular homicide about a month after he told police about the San Diego killings, Besse said, and was facing a sentence of between 10 and 99 years in prison.

Since the rumors swirling around the San Diego case were of a drug deal gone bad and Contreras was known as “the neighborhood drug dealer,” he made a perfect fall guy, said Besse.

“(Calderon) had nothing to lose and everything to gain,” the attorney told jurors.