Two men who allegedly worked on behalf of a Mexico-based drug trafficking enterprise to seek retribution for a missing truckload of cocaine in Colorado have both been sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Marco Antonio Guitierrez-Hernandez, 42, was sentenced in Weld County court Jan. 22 to 20 years in the Colorado Department of Corrections.
Serefino Hermosillo, 38, received the same sentence last October.
The two men pleaded guilty to murder in the death of a man found near Johnstown in November 2021. Gilbert Junior Gutierrez, then 40, had his hands and feet bound behind his back with rope and a sock stuffed in his mouth, according to details in the arrest affidavit in the case. Gilbert Gutierrez’s body was found behind a chicken coop on a lot northeast of the city limits. He had been beaten.
Per accounts gathered by investigators, Gutierrez was killed after coming to the defense of his friend, then-26-year-old Eduardo Avila. Gutierrez pulled a knife after Avila was pistol-whipped by Hermosillo and the gun went off.