A man gunned down in the doorway of his Littleton apartment early Tuesday was the target of a hit ordered by drug traffickers in Pontiac, Mich., a federal arrest affidavit alleges.
The motive for the killing of Joaquin Lucero- Carillo isn’t spelled out. The suspect, Franco Gonzalo Sierra-Rodriguez, was followed via his cellphone from Michigan to Littleton and ultimately to Houston, where he was arrested Wednesday night.
The investigation in Michigan became tied up in the Littleton murder case after the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration got a court order to put a wiretap on the phone of Enrique Amaya, “a person of high interest” in the Michigan-based drug-trafficking ring, the agency said Thursday.
While listening, agents heard Amaya send Sierra-Rodriguez to Colorado. But transcripts of the conversations the agents heard, included with the court papers, show it was not clear that Sierra-Rodriguez was coming west to kill anyone.
“We did not have any advance knowledge anyone was going to be murdered,” Special Agent Rich Isaacson of the Detroit DEA office said. “Certainly we would have compromised the investigation and intervened.”
Instead, they tracked Sierra-Rodriguez’s cellphone as he was driven cross-country, right to the parking lot of Parkland Square Apartments on West Belleview Avenue near South Federal Boulevard.
There, according to the affidavit, he marched up the stairs to Lucero-Carillo’s apartment, knocked and then opened fire when the door opened. Witnesses in the apartment complex courtyard told Littleton police a man carrying a pistol calmly walked past them about 1 a.m., got into a car and left.
Littleton police detectives figured out the connection between the DEA’s drug investigation and the murder when they learned that Lucero- Carillo’s truck was being tracked by the DEA, said Littleton police Lt. Sean Dugan.
Authorities have not elaborated on the reason for the slaying.
“All I can tell you is he must have angered some people, and they put a hit on him,” Dugan said, before referring other questions to federal authorities.
The slaying prompted arrests, including the capture of Sierra-Rodriguez in Texas and a Sheridan man, Jesus Daniel Medina-Meraz.
DEA agents monitoring Amaya’s cellphone conversations knew Sierra-Rodriguez was traveling in a burgundy 2002 Pontiac Grand Prix, which for a time was parked in a church lot across the street from Amaya’s Michigan home. The Grand Prix, similar to the car witnesses described as the getaway car in Littleton, was found in Houston.
The DEA has also determined that Sierra-Rodriguez and his drivers — two women who were paid $1,000 plus expenses and told nothing about the mission, according to wiretaps — stayed at a hotel near West Hampden Avenue and South Wadsworth Boulevard in Lakewood before the alleged killing.
Joey Bunch: 303-954-1174 or jbunch@denverpost.com
