SAN ANTONIO (Court TV) — More than two years after a pregnant teenager and her boyfriend were found shot to death in a car, a suspect in their alleged murders is standing trial.
Christopher Preciado is charged with three counts of murder. (San Antonio Police Dept.)
Christopher Preciado has pleaded not guilty to three counts of capital murder in the deaths of Matthew Guerra, Savanah Soto and their unborn child. That child was going to be named David, prosecutors revealed during opening statements in Preciado’s murder trial on Tuesday.
On Dec. 21, 2023, Soto was overdue to deliver her baby and was scheduled to be induced at the hospital. Family and friends began to arrive, but the couple never did. The victims’ bodies were found five days later in Guerra’s vehicle, parked at an apartment complex.
The woman who found the victims “looked inside (the car), she saw Savanah in the passenger seat, dead. Covered in junk. The baby carrier on her belly. And she was so distraught by the discovery, she didn’t even notice Matthew lying down in the backseat, also dead.”
Prosecutor Melissa Alban told the jury that Guerra and Soto had made “poor choices” and were selling drugs at the time they were killed. She said evidence led investigators to determine that Preciado had arranged to meet with Guerra to buy marijuana on Dec. 21.
Alban said that Preciado shot both victims in the head before driving Guerra’s car to where it was later found, less than one mile from Preciado’s home. The defendant allegedly called his parents to come pick him up and then hid at their house for 13 days.
Savanah Soto is seen in a family photo. (Texas Department of Public Safety)
Preciado allegedly admitted to killing the couple, but told officers that he acted in self-defense. “He did not do this because he was in fear for his life. He did it for money,” Alban said. “At the end of the day, you’re going to hear that there was nothing that happened in that car on that night that justified Christopher Preciado taking out a gun and taking out an entire family in less than 30 seconds.”
Preciado’s attorney, Joseph Esparza, urged the jury not to rush to judgment in the case. Esparza said that the jury would not be shown any video of the crime, and no DNA, blood spatter evidence, fingerprints or gunshot residue would be introduced. Esparza said that his client did talk to police, but never confessed. “He described a chaotic situation,” Esparza said. “A drug transaction gone wrong where a gun is pulled on him by the drug dealer. A struggle and chaos. Shots are fired after that. That is not capital murder.”
Esparza also suggested to the jury that evidence would lead them not to Preciado, but to his parents. Ramon Preciado is charged with abuse of a corpse for his alleged role in the crime. Esparza noted in his opening statement to the jury that the gun suspected of being used in the crime was found in the defendant’s parents’ closet. “When you separate the science from the inference, you’ll see a lot of the state’s theory is not as firmly established as they claim it to be,” he said.
Myrta Romanos, identified as Christopher Preciado’s stepmother, was also charged with evidence tampering and abuse of a corpse. Those charges were later dismissed, according to court records.
