Jury Returns Guilty Verdict in Southern Minnesota Murder Trial

Albert Lea, MN (KROC-AM News) - An Albert Lea area man has been found guilty of a long list of charges stemming from a fatal shooting in 2022.

The members of a Freeborn County Jury returned the guilty verdict against 33-year-old Ben Vidal Moreno on Tuesday. He was convicted of three counts of second-degree murder and two counts of illegal possession of a firearm and/or ammunition.

The charges stemmed from the death of 45-year-old Juan Vasquez Jr. at a rural property near Albert Lea on the afternoon of August 9, 2022. The victim was found dead from a gunshot wound to his chest near the driveway to a house on the property.

According to the criminal complaint, Moreno had allegedly stolen a package of drugs that was supposed to have been delivered to the victim. The court document says, prior to the fatal shooting, the two men exchanged threats to kill one another during confrontations that followed the incident involving the package a few weeks earlier.

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The charges say investigators learned that, about an hour before the murder, Vasquez had gone to the property where he was later killed and "shouted out" for Moreno, who allegedly responded by firing two shots from a handgun in his direction. No one was injured in that confrontation and investigators say Vasquez and another man left and spent some time at a casino in northern Iowa.

The criminal complaint says the two men later returned to the same property and were greeted by gunfire that struck the vehicle they were in. The court document says the physical evidence suggests the vehicle had been struck by buckshot fired from a shotgun that left the vehicle with significant damage and flat tires.

Witnesses told investigators that Vasquez got out of the vehicle and started walking down the driveway with a handgun in his pocket and shouting at Moreno. The charges alleged that Moreno responded by firing the fatal shot from a rifle. He fled from the scene and was arrested at a rural residence near Forest City Iowa two days after the murder.

The complaint also lists as evidence recordings of phone conversations from the Freeborn County jail during which Moreno implicated himself in the deadly shooting.

He is scheduled to be sentenced in late May.

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