The defense attorney for Jessica Yesenia Quintanilla, charged with a 2021 killing of a 19-year-old woman in Fairfield, called his client to the witness stand Tuesday, and she called the fatal shooting “an accident.”
Quintanilla, 24, of Pittsburg, then told William Alan Welch that a man with whom she once had a romantic relationship, Juan Parra-Peralta, was holding the handgun when it discharged. The bullet, as court records show, entered Leilani Beauchamp’s head, killing her.
But then Welch veered to other details in the case, including her driving to Los Angeles with Parra-Peralta on Oct. 2 to attend a sideshow, a demonstration of automotive stunts, often in a street intersection.
Testifying in Department 11 of Solano County Superior Court in Fairfield, she also admitted that both she and Parra-Peralta possessed firearms, Glock semi-automatics, at that time.
At the outset of her statements, Quintanilla, clad in an overlong beige sweater over black pants, wiped tears from the corners of her eyes.
She is charged with the Oct. 30 death of Leilani Beauchamp of Carmel while Beauchamp was sleeping in bedroom in a Cascade Lane residence. Her brother, Marco Antonio Quintanillia, 30, also of Pittsburg, is charged with being an accessory and also is on trial.
Welch showed a video and still photos of firearms the pair possessed, one of them, she said, purchased for Parra-Peralta, then 21, at his request to have in his search for the person or persons who stole his Cadillac CTS.
Quintanilla confirmed her relationship with Parra-Peralta, a former airman stationed at Travis Air Force Base who was granted immunity in the case in exchange for his testimony, was “always back-and-forth.”
She described his blocking her from access to his social media accounts but they later reconciled on Oct. 11.
But she also characterized Parra-Peralta’s occasional behavior as erratic, including the breaking into her Pittsburg apartment, physically following her and being sexually abusive.
At another sideshow, one in the Bay Area, Quintanilla saw Beauchamp with Parra-Peralta but did not confront her, she told Welch, a San Francisco-based lawyer. She said they “split up after the sideshow.”
The guns belonging to Parra-Peralta and herself, she said, remained in Parra-Peralta’s custody.
Quintanilla recalled that she arrived at the Cascade Lane home at 8:30 a.m. on Oct. 30 to retrieve some of her personal effects from the second-floor bedroom, and Parra-Peralta “was screaming at me,” asking her what she was doing in the house.
She mentioned she was trying to collect her jade bracelet, but she could not recall who pulled back the bed covers to reveal Beauchamp lying there. Quintanilla told Welch that she told Beauchamp she was only in the house to “pick up my things.”
At one point, to demonstrate what happened, Welch walked past the jury box and stood near the witness stand and a doorway, setting up scene in Parra-Peralta’s bedroom before the gunfire.
Standing near the bedroom door, Parra-Peralta, said Quintanilla, had a gun in his right hand and placed it against her left shoulder, with Welch motioning with his right hand onto her shoulder. With her left hand, she grabbed his right wrist, pushing his arm back toward the headboard and “the gun went off,” she said.
“I just ran out” of the bedroom afterward and sat in a car outside the home, she said, adding that she had “no idea what happened” to Beauchamp.
Later, she and Parra-Peralta, who had recovered his Cadillac, she said, traveled to San Leandro, then to San Jose, where they purchased items, including a shovel, at a Home Depot, then on to Salinas. There, according to Parra-Peralta’s testimony at the trial’s outset more than three weeks ago, he dumped Beauchamp’s body, wrapped in a blanket, down a hillside off a rural road.
Quintanilla testified that Parra-Peralta had control of the pair’s guns during their travels on Oct. 30, contradicting previous testimony by Parra-Peralta, who testified that she kept a gun pointed at him during their travels.
Later in the day they returned to Quintanilla’s apartment in Pittsburg, but Quintanilla said she did not know where Beauchamp’s body was.
“I didn’t know her body was in the trunk” of the Cadillac, she testified, adding that, when the trunk was eventually opened, she saw a blanket and a white plastic bag.
While at the Pittsburg apartment, Parra-Peralta washed his clothes and she showered, but, when she got out of the shower, she recalled, he was “standing by the washing machine,” suggesting he was blocking any attempt for her to leave.
They left Pittsburg and returned to the Cascade Lane home, where, in the early hours of Oct. 31, they traveled to Travis AFB. There, they met Parra-Peralta’s friend and fellow airman, Damien Ponders. They all returned to the Cascade Lane home, where Ponders and Parra-Peralta helped to clean up the second-floor bedroom and the two men drove to Vallejo to dispose of the blood-stained mattress in a Vallejo Dumpster.
Later, Quintanilla and Parra-Peralta returned to Pittsburg, where she informed her brother Parra-Peralta “had killed someone.”
Marco Quintanilla was surprised at the news, she said.
Upon cross-examination, Deputy District Attorney Ilana Shapiro got Jessica Quintanilla to admit she made telephone calls from jail, cheated on Parra-Peralta, sold marijuana during 2021, and helped to buy a firearm for Parra-Peralta.
As the latter allegation, Shapiro repeatedly showed Quintanilla copies of her Instagram messages that indicated she made an effort to purchase a handgun, specifically a Glock 17, in Sacramento.
If convicted, Jessica Quintanilla faces 25 years to life in prison and perhaps more time for the use of a firearm. And, if convicted of the felony allegation, Marco Quintanilla, who after his arrest in 2021 posted bail and was released, could face up to three years in prison, depending on the circumstances of the case, and perhaps more time for being a previously convicted felon.
The trial resumes at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday in Department 11 in the Justice Center in Fairfield and closing arguments are expected to begin in the afternoon.
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