A Riverton man has been charged with first-degree murder in federal court with investigators saying he shot a man in a moving car after demanding to know whether his girlfriend loved him.
Jose Benito Ocon, 34, faces one count of first-degree murder, another of shooting a firearm in an act of violence, and another of carrying a firearm in an act of violence.
He faces a mandatory life sentence if convicted.
It is not clear why he allegedly shot the victim, who was riding in a car with Ocon while Ocon’s girlfriend was driving.
After Ocon’s girlfriend had responded to his query that she did, in fact, love him, court records say Ocon shot the victim sitting nearby before threatening his girlfriend and another passenger with the gun.
Ocon’s girlfriend was able to confiscate the gun.
Prosecutors said the group had been drinking and using meth and marijuana before the trip.
Traffic Stop
An evidentiary affidavit by U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs Special Agent D'Artagnan Deeds, filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for Wyoming, begins by describing an Aug. 7 traffic stop in Riverton.
A Fremont County Sheriff’s Deputy stopped a white Ford Taurus speeding north on the town’s busiest thoroughfare, Federal Boulevard, at about 6:53 p.m. that evening, the document says.
The driver, whom the affidavit calls “Witness 3,” said her passenger had been shot, and she didn’t know who he was or who’d been with him, but someone had asked her to take him to the hospital.
She’d set out from a home near the 17 Mile Bridge on the Wind River Indian Reservation, the woman reportedly said.
The victim, whom the affidavit doesn’t identify, sat in the rear passenger seat of the Taurus with blood on his face, head, arms and hands. He was awake, conscious and alert, Deeds wrote.
The victim said the shooting had happened an hour earlier. Emergency medical personnel took him to SageWest Health Care in Riverton, says the document.
The man died Aug. 9.
The Fremont County Coroner’s Office on Aug. 13 completed an autopsy, from which the coroner concluded the man died of a gunshot wound to the left side of his head, the affidavit says.
Law enforcement officers two days later spoke with a woman the affidavit calls “Witness 1.” She said she was dating Ocon at the time of the shooting.
She and Ocon, plus the victim and a person called “Witness 2” had all been hanging out, drinking alcohol and using methamphetamine and marijuana on Aug. 7, said the woman, reportedly.
Witness 1 said that the four of them got into a borrowed Ford Taurus and traveled toward Riverton. As they crested a bridge on 17 Mile Road, Ocon asked his girlfriend if she loved him, the document relates.
A gun fired. The victim slumped over, bleeding from his head. The woman who’d just been asked if she loved Ocon slammed on the brakes, the affidavit says.
The document says Ocon pointed a gun at his then-girlfriend and at Witness 2 and threatened to shoot them. But the girlfriend was able to take the weapon from Ocon and toss it out the window.
Ocon exited the vehicle, Deeds wrote, and the girlfriend drove the victim and Witness 2 to a nearby home.
Witness 1 couldn’t bring herself to drive after that, the affidavit notes.
Witness 3 offered to take the bleeding man to the hospital.
Witness 2 Says …
Police interviewed Witness 2 on Aug. 21. She told investigators that she was in the car with the other three, and she’d been in the front passenger seat next to Ocon’s then-girlfriend, while the two men were in the back seat.
Witness 2 also described cresting a bridge, and hearing Ocon ask the driver, “Do you love me?”
In this account, the driver answered, “Yeah, I do.”
“Well, I see how it is then,” Ocon answered, according to Witness 2’s account.
The victim said, “Bro, she said she loves you,” reportedly.
“Check this shit out,” Ocon answered, according to Witness 2’s account.
Witness 2 heard ringing and saw a flash of light.
The driver hit the brakes. Witness 2 lurched forward, the affidavit says.
Witness 2 turned to look into the backseat, and saw the victim bleeding and lying on Ocon.
“Get this f***er off of me,” Ocon reportedly said, and is alleged to have added, “I got one for you too,” while pointing the gun at Witness 2’s head, then at Witness 1.
Ocon threatened to kill himself, Witness 2 told investigators.
That witness also described the girlfriend getting the gun and throwing it out of the window, and Ocon leaving the car while the women drove away with the bleeding victim.
“I can’t drive, I can’t drive!” the girlfriend shouted, according to the document. She turned onto a dirt road.
They stopped and told a woman, who was Witness 3, that “bro” got shot, and she needed to drive him to the hospital. She offered to do so, the document says.
Shortly After …
Shortly after the shooting, Ocon “was found on the reservation with lacerations to the face,” wrote Deeds, adding that he had what looked like blood on his pants. He asked to be locked up for his own safety.
Ocon was taken to the hospital, but he didn’t have injuries that accounted for blood on his clothing and wouldn’t explain how the blood got on his clothes, the document says.
“Law enforcement seized the defendant’s clothing shortly thereafter,” wrote Deeds.
The Wyoming Crime Lab analyzed Ocon’s pants and found the victim’s DNA on them, says the affidavit.
Then Came September
Ocon ended up in Thermopolis after the shooting and his brush with law enforcement, his case file says.
He was arrested in Thermopolis in September, on charges of interfering with a police officer, criminal entry and breach of peace.
That was about six weeks after the alleged murder.
He was convicted on all three counts and sentenced to the 60 days in jail, which he’d already served while awaiting sentencing.
He was then transferred to the Wind River Detention Center on the reservation, his court file indicates.
Thermopolis Police Department Officer Chase Workman described Ocon’s September arrest in an evidentiary affidavit.
Workman and two sheriff’s deputies responded to a home the evening of Friday Sept 19, due to a report that a strange man entered a woman’s home uninvited, and her brother to the scene with a gun, to defend her, the affidavit says.
The man was intoxicated, according to preliminary reports.
Workman talked with the suspect, later identified as Jose Benito Ocon, who was defensive and dodged questions, the affidavit says.
Ocon kept staring down the woman’s brother and approaching him as if to fight, Workman added.
Officers detained Ocon and tried walking him to the cruiser, but Workman and a deputy had to carry him because he wouldn’t walk, reportedly.
“He refused to get in and made a headbutt gesture towards me while attempting to assist him in(to) the vehicle,” wrote Workman. “Once he was in the vehicle I could here (sic) pounding coming from inside the cruiser indicating he was kicking or headbutting the inside of the cruiser repeatedly.”
Workman went back to interview two women, who described a strange man walking into the front door of their apartment home. They asked him to leave, and he didn’t – until they threatened to call the police, the document says.
Workman wrote that the brother “understandably rushed to the apartment with his personal firearm to protect his sister.”
On the way to the jail, Ocon kept telling Workman, “He was going to punch me as soon as the handcuffs come off,” the document says.
Ocon was convicted of the three misdemeanors Nov. 17.
On Jan. 5, Ocon wrote a letter from the Wind River Detention Center, on the reservation, saying he’d been there since his release from Hot Springs County Detention Center.
He wrote that he couldn’t pay toward his fine until he saw what would happen in the tribal courts system.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
