PASCO — A 17-year-old Pasco boy is headed to adult court on charges he tried to kill a homeowner during a robbery.
Eduardo Ramos, a convicted felon, is facing a minimum 15-year sentence if found guilty of all five charges in the new case, prosecutors said Thursday.
Ramos, who turns 18 in January, is accused of pulling the trigger on a gun several times while pointing it at a man who’d fallen on the ground.
The victim heard the clicks but realized the gun wasn’t working, so he chased the attackers away.
Later, Tri-City Regional SWAT team was called out to help arrest Ramos and his alleged accomplice, Moses A. Balderas.
Ramos appeared Thursday in Franklin County Juvenile Court to enter a plea to the July 13 crime, but Deputy Prosecutor Kim Kremer informed the judge the case was being moved to adult court.
The teen now is scheduled to make his first appearance Tuesday in Franklin County Superior Court on attempted second-degree murder, attempted first-degree robbery, first-degree burglary, and one count each of first- and second-degree unlawful gun possession.
Balderas, 19, is charged with attempted second-degree murder, attempted first-degree robbery and first-degree burglary. He also is set to enter a plea Tuesday. Both teens live in Pasco.
Court documents show that Luis Nunez-Gomez was getting ready to leave for work about 5 a.m. when he heard someone in the unattached garage on his Sixth Avenue property.
Nunez-Gomez confronted the intruder, who ordered the homeowner in Spanish to turn over his wallet and money.
The victim said he charged at the gun-toting Ramos, but slipped and fell. He was still on the ground when Ramos allegedly tried to shoot him, investigators said.
After being found at Balderas’ apartment on West Agate Street, Ramos told Pasco police another man was the one with the gun robbing people.
A pistol was found stashed in a backpack underneath a bed in the apartment.
Ramos claimed he’d been at the apartment all night smoking marijuana, getting high on Xanax and playing video games, and only left several times for “munchies,” court documents said.
The teen was arrested and handcuffed but got away from police officers and took off running, documents said.
Officers tracked him down and took him to a Tri-City hospital to be medically cleared before booking him. No other details of that incident were released.
Ramos’ criminal record includes two felony cases from 2016 when he was 15. His convictions include burglary, taking a car without permission, trying to elude police, bail jumping and car theft.
In the first case, Ramos and another teen broke into a South Beech Avenue home in March 2016 and stole a Samsung TV, two iPods and an Xbox and games, according to court documents.
