Ex-Wife Guilty in Plot to Kill Man

A Tustin woman was found guilty Tuesday of hiring her sister’s boyfriend to kill her ex-husband, a Marine based at El Toro.

A jury of seven women and five men took about four hours to convict Debra Paredes of attempted murder for luring Sgt. Johnny Rivera to an empty schoolyard, where the gunman waited. Although he was shot five times, Rivera survived.

Paredes and Rivera had been married for nine years when they divorced in 1996. On Jan. 19, 1997, she asked him to meet her at Lambert Elementary School on San Juan Street in Tustin to talk about their two daughters, ages 9 and 11.

Instead, he encountered a man in a ski mask holding a .357 revolver. The man came “from out of nowhere,” Rivera testified, and pointed a gun at his head.

“He started firing, but I ducked, and the first round missed me.” The man emptied the gun at Rivera, said Raymond Armstrong, the prosecutor in the case.

On the ground, Rivera pretended that he was dead in hopes that the gunman would stop shooting. At one point, he even told the man, “ ‘You don’t need to reload. You’ve already killed me,’ ” Armstrong said.

One of the five bullets that struck Rivera remains lodged in his body, the prosecutor said.

The assailant walked away, and Rivera went for help. He immediately told investigators that he suspected his wife was behind the attack, Armstrong said.

“The motive appears to have been hatred,” Armstrong said. But during trial, prosecutors also told the jury that Paredes may have wanted to collect a $200,000 life insurance policy.

The gunman, Marc Garric Johnson, of Jackson, Miss., was returning to a motel room that Paredes had booked for him when officers stopped him for questioning because he looked suspicious; he was wearing a wig and a jacket that was inside out.

Johnson lied to the officers about his name and his residence, but then he gave them the correct name of the motel where he was staying and the room number, Armstrong said.

Both Johnson and Paredes were arrested shortly after the shooting.

Paredes, who remarried another Marine, was convicted of solicitation to commit a crime, attempted murder and conspiracy. She is scheduled for sentencing July 24, a court clerk said, and she faces a maximum sentence of life in prison. The custody of their two children has not been resolved, Armstrong said.

Johnson pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and agreed to testify against Paredes. He is scheduled to be sentenced Friday. The district attorney’s office is recommending life in prison, Armstrong said.