Alleged Murderer Pleads Not Guilty

A man accused of shooting a 20-year-old woman to death through the window of her Temecula home pleaded not guilty today.

Jose Adan Martinez, 19, was charged with murder with sentence enhancements for belonging to a gang, owning and using a gun and committing a crime while on bail, according to court records. He was also charged with stealing a car in 2009, to which he already pleaded not guilty.

The shooting happened on June 16 in the 7600 block of Sonora Circle, according to the district attorney’s office. The victim, Maria Semental, was living with her boyfriend, Adrian Jurado, at the time of the shooting.

Martinez, who was friends with Jurado, drove with several other people to the home, walked up to a window on the side and fired into it, Jurado said at a preliminary hearing. Semental died of four gunshot wounds.

Martinez’s friends, who were waiting in the car, were shocked by the shooting, Investigator Benjamin Ramirez said. Martinez rambled about the killing incoherently afterwards and was on a four-day-long methamphetamine binge, the defendant’s friends told an investigator.

Martinez was a gang member and killed Semental to “send a message,” to somebody, Ramirez said. What that message was and to whom he was trying to send it was unclear.