An unauthorized immigrant from Guatemala who went on a stabbing rampage on the Las Vegas Strip in 2022 that left two people dead and injured six others, pleaded guilty but mentally ill to two counts of murder on Thursday.
The man, Yoni Barrios, 34, will serve life in prison without the possibility of parole but will avoid the death penalty, according to a copy of his plea agreement, which was reached in Clark County District Court.
His unprovoked attack on the morning of Oct. 6, 2022, provided political grist to Donald J. Trump and to a far-right nonprofit anti-immigration group. His victims included several showgirl impersonators, one of whom was killed.
Mr. Barrios pleaded guilty to a total of 15 counts, including five for attempted murder with use of a deadly weapon and one count of an act of terrorism. His formal sentencing is scheduled for March 14.
Scott L. Coffee, a public defender for Mr. Barrios, said in an interview on Thursday that his client had received a diagnosis of unspecified schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders.
“The allegations were egregious, but the state also recognized that he was somebody who was severely mentally ill,” said Mr. Coffee, who described Mr. Barrios as being “delusional” at the time of the attack.
The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department referred questions on Thursday to the Clark County District Attorney’s Office, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The attack unfolded on the 3100 block of South Las Vegas Boulevard near the Wynn Las Vegas casino, where Mr. Barrios approached a group of showgirl impersonators and asked to take a picture with them, saying he was a chef, the authorities said. He appeared to be dressed in a chef’s jacket and showed them a knife before lunging at his victims, video showed. Investigators said that Mr. Barrios told them that he had snapped after some of the women laughed at him. In the video, Mr. Barrios was seen running along a sidewalk and stabbing more victims, one of them in the back.
The Clark County coroner’s office identified the victims who were killed as Maris Mareen Digiovanni, 30, a showgirl impersonator from Las Vegas, and Brent Allan Hallett, 47, who The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported was from Alberta in Canada and had been staying in the city for several months while traveling around the world.
The stabbings drew national attention from people including Mr. Trump, who brought it up during a rally for his political action committee in Nevada in October 2022, weeks before the midterm elections. Mr. Trump said Mr. Barrios had a criminal record in California but the “bloodthirsty killer was unknown to law enforcement because of California’s barbaric sanctuary city policies.”
“You can’t walk down a street in a Democrat-run city without being shot, or mugged or knifed,” he said.
Although Mr. Barrios was charged in 2019 with domestic violence stemming from a 2018 episode, according to KSNV News 3 in Las Vegas, the case was “dismissed or not prosecuted” in 2021. It was not clear why the case did not proceed.
That did not stop the group Citizens for Sanity, an anti-immigration nonprofit with ties to the America First Legal Foundation, a group formed by Stephen Miller, from running an ad during the baseball playoffs in October 2022 that called attention to the stabbings. Mr. Miller currently holds the positions of deputy White House chief of staff, with oversight of domestic policy, and homeland security adviser.
The ad was characterized as “misleading” by the group FactCheck.org, which also mentioned that there had not been a conviction in Mr. Barrios’s domestic violence case in California.
Mr. Coffee, the lawyer for Mr. Barrios, said that his client has been in the United States for more than a decade. While an initial mental competency assessment found him unfit for trial, he said, Mr. Barrios was declared competent about six weeks ago and has been receiving mental health treatment. The lawyer described the depth of Mr. Barrios’s mental illness.
“He thought he was being pursued by police from L.A.,” he said. “He thought he had been sprayed by some kind of mister that had anthrax in it.”
As part of his plea agreement, Mr. Barrios will continue to be treated for his mental illness while serving his life sentence, Mr. Coffee said. He also will be housed separately from other inmates until officials determine that it is safe for him to join the general population.
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