AKRON, Ohio — The surviving victim of a 2023 kidnapping and triple murder in Summit County testified in court Tuesday on day two of the trial against accused killer Elias Gudino.
It all happened on March 9, 2023. Oscar Mejia-Gomez, from Honduras, says he had just gotten home from work in Youngstown when two men tied him up and held him and his three roommates at gunpoint.
"We were asking them what was the reason they were taking us," Mejia-Gomez told the court, through an interpreter. "I didn't know him and didn't know if the rest knew him."
Mejia-Gomez testified that one of the men was masked, and to this day, prosecutors say suspect's identity is unknown. The second man was not wearing a mask, and Mejia-Gomez identified him as the defendant, Elias Gudino.
Gudino's attorneys don't dispute he was there during the kidnapping, but they argue he had no choice. Gudino got involved in selling drugs with a cartel earlier in his life, and said he expected the cartel to eventually come for him. On March 9, he claimed a cartel assassin showed up at his house and threatened to kill his family if he didn't come along, per the defense.
"We only know what he (Gudino) is privy to," his attorney said during opening statements. "What we don't know is why did some of this stuff happen? Well, when you're part of a plot, you're not deciding what the next step is. You don't know."
But according to Mejia-Gomez, it was Gudino who was calling the shots that night, when he drove him and his roommates to his home in Copley, tied their hands, duct taped their mouths, and wrote the name of the gang "MS-13" on their chests. Mejia-Gomez got emotional as he described the moment he says Gudino pointed a gun at him on the side of a road in Copley.
"He had no mercy," Mejia-Gomez said.
Incredibly, the bullet went through Mejia-Gomez's hat and only grazed his head. He played dead, but his three roommates were all killed.
"He (Gudino) was the one who did everything," Mejia-Gomez testified. "He was the one who threatened. He said that he was the one who has been for a long time looking at the person at work."
Mejia-Gomez asserted that the person Gudino was searching for that day was not him or his current roommates, but rather his former roommate Ariel. Prosecutors say Ariel had moved out of the house and moved in with Gudino's wife, who they say had left Gudino.