Teenage girl tells of being shot between the eyes

Kim Smith

Thursday, Jan. 10, 2002 | 9:25 a.m.

As she slowly walked up the stairs toward what was supposed to be her death, 17-year-old Sonia Gallardo said she pleaded with her assailant, who grabbed a baby blanket along the way.

"I said 'Please, please leave me alone,' " Gallardo testified Wednesday. "I said I wasn't going to do anything."

Instead of showing her mercy, Gallardo said, Eriberto "Eddie" Leon put the blanket over her head and placed a .22 caliber revolver in her mouth, then between her eyes.

"He just laughed and said not to make it harder than it already is," Gallardo said.

He then pulled the trigger and left, she said.

Gallardo, who still has a bullet lodged between her eyes, was one of six witnesses to take the stand Wednesday during a preliminary hearing for Leon, 16, and Pablo Guerrero, 23.

Prosecutors allege Guerrero kidnapped his estranged wife, Brenda Guerrero, 22, and ordered Leon to kill Gallardo, his sister-in-law, on Nov. 6.

Justice of the Peace James Bixler is expected to announce his decision Friday on whether there is enough evidence to try the men on multiple charges, including attempted murder and kidnapping.

Gallardo said that when she got out of school Nov. 6 she saw Guerrero sitting in her parents' van waiting to pick her up. It wasn't until she was inside the van that she noticed her sister tied up with tape and rope in the back.

When she asked her brother-in-law what he was doing, he said he was taking her sister to Tijuana so she could learn how to love him again. He and Brenda Guerrero had been separated for six months and he believed her cell phone records proved she had been unfaithful, Gallardo said.

Gallardo said Guerrero drove them to her parents' home where Leon was waiting.

Gallardo said that as Guerrero and her sister waited in the van, she was forced into the house by Leon, where she was ordered to find her sister's cell phone. After giving it to Guerrero, she was sent back into the house and she believed the men and her sister left.

However, moments later, Leon walked back into the locked house using a key investigators believe he got from Guerrero.

It was then, Gallardo said, that she was marched into her parents' bedroom and shot while her 4-year-old nephew stood outside the closed door.

Gallardo said that after she was shot, she lay on the bed for 20 minutes, faking her death and fearing Leon's return. She went downstairs, found herself too scared to walk out the front door and returned upstairs. There, she found her bedroom telephone cord had been cut.

Afraid Leon was waiting out front for her, Gallardo said she jumped off her second-story balcony and crawled to a neighbor's.

She spent five days in the hospital where she had surgery to remove bullet fragments. Doctors, unable to remove the bullet, have filed it down and she now suffers from migraines and poor vision.

"I have nightmares all of the time, about what happened, what could've happened, of my sister dying," Gallardo said.

Brenda Guerrero, too, testified Wednesday, saying the last thing her husband said to her as he was being arrested was that she should wait for him to get out of jail because they would be together again then.