KENNEWICK — A woman who set up a man to be killed — telling the shooter his exact location inside a Richland motel room and leaving the door ajar — is going to prison for 17 1/2 years.
Joselyn Guzman, 30, was sentenced in Benton County Superior Court for the April 2020 killing of Anthony M. Irvine.
That hearing came two weeks after she pleaded guilty to an amended charge of second-degree murder.
The shooter, Jonah W. Glass, received a 27-year sentence in April following a first-degree murder plea.
According to police and court documents, Irvine, 24, was in bed in his Days Inn room when Glass came in and shot him.
Glass, 24, claimed he had intended to rob the Burbank man but ended up shooting Irvine once in the head.
Richland police were called to the motel room shortly after 10 a.m. on April 17, 2020.
Irvine was dead when officers arrived.
Guzman initially told detectives that she left the motel room to grab something from her car. She said she left the room door ajar, and was in the parking lot when she heard a loud “pop” that she believed was a gunshot.
Guzman said she went back to the room and found Glass standing by one of the beds with a “bewildered look on his face,” documents said. Glass then ran outside, she claimed.
A spent .22-caliber casing was found by the bed where Irvine was shot, according to police.
During the initial search of the motel room, officers saw several calls come in to a phone left on one of the beds. The missed calls were from Guzman.
She was detained hours after the killing, but was released when she denied any involvement during questioning.
In a follow-up interview the next day, detectives confronted Guzman with evidence that she set up Irvine.
That included traffic camera footage the morning of the murder that showed her car following a stolen car driven by Glass, from Kennewick into Richland to the Jadwin Avenue motel.
Investigators also had text messages from Guzman to Glass, identifying the specific motel room and which bed Irvine was sleeping in, court documents said.
Then, 10 minutes after the shooting, Guzman sent a series of texts to Glass asking for his location and suggesting they meet up.
“This was for the both of us,” she wrote when Glass failed to respond, the documents said.
“Are you trying to play me,” she also wrote.
Guzman told investigators that Glass was only supposed to point a gun at the victim in an attempt to get money.
The co-conspirators believed Irvine would give up during the robbery, documents said.
Glass was caught four days later following an hour-long standoff at a Pasco home.
At Guzman’s sentencing on Friday, she asked for a 14 1/2-year term at the bottom of the sentencing range given her criminal history.
Prosecutors consulted with Irvine’s family before requesting a 17 1/2-year sentence.
Irvine’s loved ones, including the mother and grandmother of his son, told Judge Alex Ekstrom how they’ve been affected by his death and that Guzman’s “actions will forever impact their family,” according to a Benton County Prosecutor’s Office post on Facebook.
Ekstrom followed the state’s recommendation and went with the higher prison term.
