SANTA CRUZ — The second of three co-defendants in an attempted jailhouse murder case has pleaded no contest to charges ahead of his preliminary hearing.
Adrian Ortiz, 24, reached a plea deal Friday with the Santa Cruz County District Attorney’s Office for a seven-year prison sentence. He now faces sentencing on charges of felony assault with a deadly weapon and an enhancement for acting to benefit a gang. As part of the deal, additional charges of attempted murder with great bodily injury and participating in gang activity are expected to be dismissed at Ortiz’s sentencing hearing.
Prosecutors had charged Ortiz, along with co-defendants Leo Rueda, 39, and Matthew Madriz Alcaraz, 20, in the June 26, 2023, shanking of a 20-year-old Santa Cruz County Jail inmate. Ortiz had been jailed just days before the confrontation on an out-of-state warrant. Prior to his arrest, Ortiz had been out of custody on felony probation related to a March 2021 conviction for carrying a concealed weapon. Similarly, Rueda, who was charged with gang-related felony assault with great bodily injury and felony gang participation in the shanking case, took a plea deal in November that reduced his gang charge to misdemeanor street terrorism. While released on supervision after his plea and ahead of his sentencing, Rueda was arrested in April and booked into Santa Clara County Jail on suspicion of felony larceny and misdemeanor drug possession charges, according to court documents.
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The remaining co-defendant, Madriz, is scheduled to face gang-related attempted murder charges at a pending preliminary hearing date likely to be delayed from its scheduled Tuesday start. Before his charged involvement with the inmate shanking, Madriz, of Morgan Hill, had been jailed since April 2022 on a separate case related to the fatal gunning down of 18-year-old Watsonville man Feliciano Martinez-Perea. A judge ruled in May 2023 that sufficient evidence existed to hold Madriz and a co-defendant in the murder case, Erick DeHaro Tostado, 20, of Watsonville, to face trial. The court has set an October date for DeHaro’s trial to move forward. Madriz is scheduled to set his murder trial date Tuesday, providing a window for the potential combination of charges in Madriz’s separate cases to be merged, should a judge hold Madriz to answer on the attempted murder case.