Burglary defendant Luis Baeza-Soto was a no-show for his arraignment hearing set in Pitkin County District Court on Monday after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement transported him to Chile.
Two co-defendants nabbed in the November overnight burglary of a downtown Aspen luxury-watch boutique have been deported home to South America without entering pleas.
Luis Baeza-Soto failed to appear for an arraignment hearing set in Pitkin County District Court on Monday after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement transported him to Chile in recent days, according to his court-appointed lawyer, Don Nottingham.
“It appears that he’s been deported,” Nottingham said after court. “He no longer appears on any of the ICE locator websites and his family reported to me that he’s been deported to Chile.”
Nottingham said he last spoke with Baeza-Soto earlier this month. He was in an ICE holding center in Leavenworth, Kansas, at the time of that conversation, Nottingham said.
During the court proceedings, Senior Deputy District Attorney Robert Whiting noted one of his staff members called a facility in Pine Prairie, Louisiana, believing he was there. The staff member couldn’t confirm the whereabouts of Baeza-Soto, however.
“The People are unable to make any progress working with ICE in identifying if or whether the defendant is housed somewhere,” Whiting said.
Pitkin County District Judge Laura Makar accepted Whiting’s request to issue an in-state, failure-to-appear warrant for the arrest of Baeza-Soto. She did not, however, see value in scheduling another hearing for Baeza-Soto, who has not entered a plea to four felony offenses he faces —three charges of conspiracy to commit second degree-burglary and one for attempted influence of a public servant.
“The court’s inclination is not to set this for a further setting,” she said.
Another co-defendant, Paolo Zapata-Canete, 45, was deported to his home country of Chile in May. ICE officials detained him after he bonded out for $5,000 on Dec. 19 and transported him to a detention processing center in Aurora, according to ICE web records from that time. He faced three felony counts of conspiracy to commit second-degree burglary.
In order for the burglary cases of both Baeza-Soto and Zapata-Canete to be adjudicated, they first would have to re-enter the United States illegally.
Meanwhile, the two primary figures in the burglary have been held in the Pitkin County Jail on $100,000 cash-only bonds since they were booked Nov. 12.
Unlike Baeza-Soto and Zapata-Canete, neither of whom pleaded to the charges and were deported home after they bonded out of jail, the two Pitkin County inmates have both reached plea agreements with the prosecution.
Agustin Ramirez-Vidal, 41, of Argentina, pleaded guilty in May to separate charges of burglary of an occupied structure and attempting to influence a public servant. Vidal is said by authorities to have worn Ray-Ban sunglasses with a hidden camera to case a downtown building one day before the burglary.
Ramirez-Vidal is due back in court on Aug. 4 for a sentencing hearing.
Similarly, the fourth co-defendant, Tomas Bravo-Toro, 33, struck a deal with the prosecution by pleading guilty to two felony charges of burglary of an occupied commercial structure. The agreement was announced June 16 in district court.
At the time of his arrest, Bravo-Toro told authorities he works in Lima, Peru. According to a Colorado Pretrial Assessment Tool, which examines the backgrounds of criminal defendants, Bravo-Toro is a “possible national security threat — caution violent tendencies,” without elaborating.
A sentencing hearing for Tomas Bravo-Toro is set for Aug. 18. He has five to six aliases, according to court records.
Baeza-Soto and Agustin-Ramirez each have at least two aliases, prosecutors have said.
Zapata-Canate was the only suspect to give authorities his real name, according to court records and hearings.
The Aspen Daily News is reporting the names of the defendants as they are charged in the Aspen burglary case.
According to an arrest-warrant affidavit filed by Aspen Police Officer Lauren Turner, burglars tried to break into Avi & Co. jewelry store in Aspen just before midnight on Nov. 10.
Police initially responded to a false alarm around midnight but returned two hours later to find a ladder leading into a nearby art gallery. Inside, officers discovered the suspects had tunneled through a café and the gallery to access the jewelry store. Though they failed to open the safe, the businesses were heavily damaged, with security cameras spray-painted, sensors foamed over and walls torn apart.
Authorities say the four men used blowtorches, saws, drills, hammers, crowbars and other tools to tunnel their way into the retailer. The store’s vault containing its most valuable inventory was not compromised, but there was significant damage to the Avi & Co. structure and some of the connecting business the alleged burglars used for access, authorities said.
Aspen police, using license-plate-recognition technology and other investigative tools, sent out a statewide notice to law enforcement on Nov. 11. Vail authorities detained the suspects who afterwards were arrested by Aspen police and booked in Pitkin County Jail a day later.