Testimony opens in trial of alleged driver in killing of East High junior

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Updated: April 7, 2012 1:56AM

YORKVILLE — Testimony began Monday in the trial of the man accused of driving the car used in the 2009 murder of an East Aurora High School soccer player.

Francisco Salazar, who turns 23 on Sunday, is charged with murder in the shooting death of 17-year-old Jason Ventura.

Prosecutors said at 12:51 a.m. on Dec. 20, 2009, Zachary Reyes was riding in car driven by Salazar, of the 100 block of High Street, Aurora. Reyes fired 11 shots at a car he believed was full of rival gang members driving near Douglas and Long Beach roads, prosecutors said.

Five of the shots hit Ventura. An 18-year-old passenger in Ventura’s car was also wounded.

After the shooting, Ventura’s car rolled into the front yard of a home near Long Beach and Sonora roads, in the Boulder Hill subdivision outside Oswego city limits.

On Monday, Kendall County state’s attorney Eric Weis said Ventura had attended a birthday party the night he died. Ventura was not a gang member, but had agreed to give a ride to some other teens who were in a gang, Weis said. The teens in Ventura’s car flashed gang signs at the other car, which instigated the shooting, Weis said.

“Jason Ventura is dead because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Weis said Monday during opening statements. “That’s the reason Jason’s dead: they (the rival gang members) didn’t like each other.”

After broadcasting a description of the shooter’s car, an Oswego officer was able to make a traffic stop near Broadway and Evans Avenue in Aurora, police said. Multiple people in the car — including Reyes — were held for questioning. Reyes and Salazar were charged in the murder.

Ventura was a junior at East Aurora High School who played on the school’s varsity soccer team. He was the middle of three boys.

On Monday, his mother testified that he was planning to attend college, then go into coaching or law enforcement one day.

Reyes was convicted of Ventura’s murder late last month. He could be sentenced on March 29. Because the jury ruled that Reyes fired the shots that killed Ventura, he faces at least 92 years in prison.