LUBBOCK, Texas — Jake Austin Johnson, 30, accepted a plea deal and a 10-year prison sentence on Thursday related to the murder of Gabriel Lee Salazar. More specifically, Johnson admitted to tampering with evidence.
Salazar was found dead behind the Carriage House Inn on Slaton Road in 2017. He had been stabbed and shot according to previous court records.
An arrest warrant specifically accused Raynaldo Jacob Enriquez, age 26 at the time, of pulling the trigger. The warrant said Johnson and Dimitrise Lyghts took Salazar from the Central Lubbock home of Geneva Monique Leal to the Carriage House and left him for dead.
The warrant accused Leal of hitting Salazar with a baseball bat after he was shot. It also accused her of wanting Salazar to suffer and not die immediately.
Court records specifically in Johnson’s case said he went to Leal’s duplex to meet another individual. He left the duplex and then returned.
Johnson told police that when he came back, he saw an injured man. Johnson told police he offered to help remove the injured male from the residence.
Leal and Enriquez were still held in the Lubbock County Detention Center as of Thursday – both on a murder charge. Lyghts was sentenced to federal prison time for a completely different case, namely sex trafficking of a minor.
