Carjacking suspects who fatally shot passerby after pursuit were on parole

Two people arrested for shooting a 21-year-old Denver woman to death while attempting to steal her car early Sunday morning are both parolees from the Colorado Department of Corrections. 

Martin Cerda, 23, and Adriana Vargas-Martinez, 24, were both advised today in Boulder court of their new charges. Both have been charged with 2nd Degree Murder and Possession of a Weapon by a Previous Offender. Cerda, evidently the driver of the car that fled authorities in Larimer County prior to the shooting, also has eluding and aggravated robbery charges on file.

Larimer County deputies called off a pursuit of Cerda and Vargas-Martinez's car after it crossed into oncoming traffic at high speed in an attempt to evade tire-deflating stop sticks which deputies had placed in the roadway.

Fifteen minutes later, the car broke down north of Longmont. Cerda is accused of trying to "carjack" the Denver woman's vehicle, or steal it from the driver while using a weapon. He did not succeed, but injured the woman when he fired a handgun at her car. 

The woman, who has not been identified yet by authorities, was a passenger in a car driven by her mother. Her mother drove to a Longmont hospital. There, her daughter passed away. 

"It's just devastating," Larimer County Sheriff Justin Smith told CBS4. "It's absolutely devastating to everybody involved here. By all accounts, the mother and daughter were trying to stay out of the way."

Smith said his deputies made the decision to stop chasing Cerda and Vargas-Martinez's car because its driver's dangerous behavior put other citizens at risk, and the vehicle was heading out of their county.

Now, with the passerby's death, those deputies are struggling with the outcome.

"It's just such a tough call," Smith said. "All of our staff are very bothered by it. What do you do? What's the right choice? It kind of shakes (LCSO staff) to know...where are we at as a society?"  

Smith's deputies first spotted the suspects' car near 5th Street and Cleveland Avenue in downtown Loveland at 12:15 a.m. The car was weaving and "it looked like a DUI stop," Smith said.

Then they discovered the car was outfitted with stolen license plates. 

They tried to pull the car over on southbound Lincoln Avenue, which is also U.S. Highway 287, heading out of Loveland. The driver accelerated rather than pulling over.

Deputies farther ahead placed the stop sticks at Larimer County Road 10E's overpass over 287. But after the dramatic evasion by the suspects' car, deputies disengaged the pursuit by the time it reached the intersection with Highway 56 a mile later.  

Smith said his office was involved in pursuits about 25 times a year six years ago. To date, they're already been involved in up to 150 this year. 

"It is scary these days the number of people who will flee," Smith said, "in stolen cars, with stolen plates, with drugs in the car, with weapons, and dangerous driving behavior."   

The increase in auto thefts and dangerous fleeing from police is widespread across the Front Range, he added. The aggressive behavior is facilitated by quick releases of property crime offenders from jail or prison, and lessened bond amounts.

"All too often, they're back out within hours and right back to the same behavior," Smith said. "We're frustrated beyond our ability to articulate. There's got to be a reset."  

Cerda and Vargas-Martinez's car crossed into Boulder County and broke down in the lanes of 287 traffic near Yellowstone Road. Boulder County's 9-1-1 dispatchers started receiving calls about a suspicious vehicle there at 12:30 a.m. Those witnesses saw several people running from the car into the farm fields next to the highway. 

A call from staff at the Longmont hospital came into dispatch 10 minutes later.

Cerda, Vargas-Martinez, and another man and woman were found in a camper trailer on private property, according to the Boulder County Sheriff's Office press release. The second man was released. The second woman, 24-year-old Marissa Ruiz of Greeley, was detained on outstanding warrants. 

"We do believe we have the primary shooter identified (Cerda)," BCSO spokesperson Carrie Haverfield told CBS4, "and Vargas has been charged as complicit in that act and is believed to have been in possession of a firearm at least at some point during the incident."

According to a search of online criminal records, Cerda was sentenced to three years in state prison in 2020 after pleading guilty to crimes in five combined cases, all but one in Greeley. Those cases involved charges of auto theft, burglary, theft, trespassing and criminal mischief. 

Vargas-Martinez was sentenced in September 2021 to two years in state prison at the end of a case involving auto theft, drugs and eluding.