Men indicted for home invasions
By Gentry Braswell
Wick News Service

SIERRA VISTA — Three illegal immigrants arrested Dec. 5 after a manhunt involving Cochise County deputies and U.S. Border Patrol agents were indicted Thursday in connection to multiple home invasions.

Between the three Mexican nationals, they are charged with more than 40 counts, including kidnapping, first-degree armed burglary and theft, Cochise County Attorney Ed Rheinheimer said Friday.

The men were served with the indictment on Friday.

After their arrest, bond was inappropriately set at $15,000 apiece in Justice of the Peace District 4 Court, Rheinheimer said.

When county prosecutors read of the men’s bonds on Dec. 8, a call was placed to the court to get the mistake corrected, Rheinheimer said.

Alejandrino Lara-Silva, 19, of Puebla Puebla, Mexico; Natialio Valenzuela-Valdez, 41, of Alamos, Mexico; and Yercho Vedoch-Arrayo, 18, of Las Manches, Sinaloa, Mexico, were indicted by a Cochise County grand jury. Advertisement

The men were captured Dec. 6 after fleeing on foot Dec. 5 from an interrupted home invasion in the unincorporated Pearce area, during which the men tied up a 58-year-old woman in her guesthouse restroom after she investigated strange sounds in the house, according to the Cochise County Sheriff’s Office. The woman was not injured.

The original bond setting was inappropriate because, per a state law, if suspects are accused of most any major crime — as is the case for these three men, Rheinheimer said — and are believed to be illegal immigrants, the judge is supposed to deny bond and defendants have seven days to prepare for a hearing to present evidence that they’re not in the country illegally.

“And for whatever reason — and we don’t know why — a bond for $15,000 (each) was set when no bond should’ve been set,â€