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 July 24 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, said investigators.
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 form 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.
They loaded the items into the homeowner’s Chevy Tahoe and drove off, according to court documents.
The teens sold the TV on Facebook for $100 and dropped it off at the buyer’s Pasco home, then picked up a third teen and went for “a joy ride” in the stolen SUV, documents said.
The teens then ditched the Chevy on a Pasco street and Ramos tossed the keys into a bush. All three were arrested a couple days later at Pasco High School.
And then in September 2016, a Pasco officer tried to stop a Dodge sedan for failing to stop at a stop sign. The car instead took off and disappeared, court documents show.
Four minutes later, witnesses reported seeing the car drive up onto a curb several blocks away and about five teens get out and ran off. Ramos was the driver.
On Thursday, Ramos was found in contempt by Juvenile Court Commissioner Jackie Stam of failing to make payments on those two cases since April.
His defense attorney told the judge that Ramos was working on saving up money to meet his $25-a-month requirement on each case.
Stam did not order sanctions at this time since Ramos in back in jail.
