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Tuesday, June 16, 2009
'Party House' Owner Faces More Charges
By Jeff Proctor
Journal Staff Writer
The owner of a West Side "party house" where a 14-year-old was fatally shot in December was indicted Monday on 19 felony counts, including seven for child abuse.
Prosecutors worked late into the afternoon Monday to present the charges against Margie Ferrell to the grand jury.
That's because Ferrell, 34, is scheduled to be released from prison today.
"Because she is scheduled to get out of prison, we expedited this case," said Pat Davis, spokesman for the District Attorney's Office.
Ferrell owns the home on the 8900 block of Round Rock SW where, in the early morning hours of Dec. 27, police say 19-year-old Efrain Valenzuela shot Raylene Jaramillo at point blank range over a comment Jaramillo or one of her friends had made about Valenzuela's nickname.
On Monday, the DA's Office faxed copies of the indictment and arrest warrants to the Women's Correctional Facility in Grants, where Ferrell has been held on a probation violation since March.
"As soon as she is released from the women's facility, she will be re-arrested on the new charges and returned to Bernalillo County to be arraigned in District Court," Davis said. "She will then be taken to the (Metropolitan Detention Center) and her bond will be up to a judge."
The indictment charges Ferrell with seven counts of negligently caused child abuse, seven counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor and five counts of giving or selling alcohol to a minor.
Ferrell's probation stemmed from a March 2008 incident in which she pleaded guilty to charges of giving alcohol to minors and contributing to the delinquency of minors after a party at her home in which teens were passed out and someone was firing shots in the air. Officials said she violated that probation when she hosted the party at which Raylene was killed.
Police had been called to Ferrell's home more than a dozen times in the three years before Raylene's death for loud parties, family fights, a bomb threat and other disturbances.
After Raylene was killed, Pete Dinelli, city chief public safety officer who supervises the city's Criminal Nuisance Abatement Unit, ordered the electricity turned off at Ferrell's home and her two daughters, ages 18 and 16, went to Texas to live with their grandmother.
A Bernalillo County grand jury indicted Valenzuela in January on charges of willful and deliberate first-degree murder, second-degree murder with a firearm enhancement, manslaughter with a firearm enhancement, intentional child abuse resulting in death and evidence tampering. No trial date has been set.
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