Mike Lopez Springville Utah man shoots mother Victoria Ramirez dead, dances with teen sister next to body by the family dinner table.
A Utah man has been accused of shooting his mother at the dinner table and then danced with his 14-year-old sister next to her bleeding corpse, court documents state.
Mike Lopez, 23, walked into the kitchen where his two sisters, aged 14 and 17, were sitting with their mother Victoria Ramirez, 43, at their home in Springville on December 23.
Lopez sat down with them and pointed a shotgun at his mother before turning to his 14-year-old sister who nodded at him, a police affidavit states according to KUTV.
The girl then got up and locked herself in an adjacent bathroom while Lopez’s elder sister also left but remained outside the door.
‘I know you’re going to kill me, and I love you,’ Ramirez is said to have told her son before he ‘fired a single shot, striking her in the neck and face, killing her almost instantly.’
‘Someone told me to do it’
The 14-year-old then returned to the room where she started stroking her mother’s hair before Lopez took her by the arm and started dancing with her, according to the affidavit.
The 17-year-old locked herself in the bathroom where she escaped through the window and phoned a relative who then alerted the police The Salt Lake Tribune reported.
When officers arrived Lopez was sitting in a filled bathtub with the shotgun resting against the tub.
While being booked into Utah County jail an officer informed him that he was being charged with his mother’s murder to which he nodded his head affirmatively and began to cry. He subsequently told the officer, ‘Someone told me to do it,’ court papers stated.
Lopez had marijuana in his system and the 17-year-old sister told officers she believed that her brother had been smoking the drugs with the 14-year-old sister.
‘She stated Mike has been acting really strange lately where he has been meditating a lot where he claims to go to different dimensions and talking about a lot of bad people,’ the affidavit states.
The sister said that Lopez bought a handgun and a shotgun the day before he shot their mother.
‘…she remembered dancing and then she was trying to recite the song for me’
Officers noted that the 14-year-old girl ‘was acting very strange’ during her interview.
She told detectives she and Lopez ‘have been together a lot lately and they take turns sleeping so they can watch over one another.’
The girl claimed it was not her mother who had been shot.
When asked about reports that she had been dancing with her brother after the shooting, she ‘looked at me and smiled and stated she remembered dancing and then she was trying to recite the song for me,’ the detective said in the affidavit.
The document says that she started to sing a song during the interview and ‘did not show any emotion.’
Lopez is charged with murder, a first-degree felony, domestic violence in the presence of a child and possession of a weapon by a restricted person, both third-degree felonies.
On Monday, the case was transferred to the 4th District Court in American Fork.
The son is scheduled to next appear in court on January 12.
