20-year-old sentenced for killing a 70-year-old Kennewick neighbor mowing the lawn
A Kennewick man who admitted to killing his neighbor in an unprovoked attack while he mowed his lawn will spend more than 22 years behind bars.
Hector R. Munguia, 20, told a judge in December that he could have and didn’t ignored the hallucinations that pushed him to stab and kill his neighbor in April 2022.
He pleaded guilty to first-degree murder at that hearing and has been awaiting sentencing since. He was sentenced at a hearing Friday in Benton County Superior Court.
Sentencing hearing
He was facing a range of 22 to 30 years in a Washington state prison if the juvenile crimes were counted. If not, he would have faced a shorter range of 20 to more than 26 years.
Prosecutors asked for a 30-year sentence, but his defense attorney hoped for less time.
Ultimately Benton Franklin Superior Court Judge Samuel Swanberg agreed to a sentence of about 22 1/2 years.
The sentencing range was dependent on whether crimes he committed as a juvenile counted toward his sentencing range. Those crimes included another unprovoked stabbing. Swanberg found that his juvenile offenses did count based on the law at the time, but sentenced him at the bottom of the longer range due to his low offender score.
One of his previous convictions was for second-degree assault after stabbing a woman getting out of her car in Kennewick.
Munguia has been in the Benton County jail since shortly after he killed Zale Underwood, 70. He was 18 at the time.
Competent to stand trial
Munguia allegedly ran home after stabbing Underwood in his front yard. His mother later took him to the sheriff’s office.
After he was booked into jail, he reported that he suffered from hallucinations that he called “demons” who urged him to hurt people.
An Eastern State Hospital mental evaluation found he suffers from an unspecified schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorder, as well as cannabis and alcohol use disorders.
While they said his heavy use of cannabis appeared to have led to hallucinations in the past, neither Benton County officers nor Eastern State Hospital officials found he appeared to be reacting to internal stimuli, according to the reports.
He was found competent to stand trial but instead pleaded guilty.
April 2022 stabbing
Underwood was mowing his lawn in the 1100 block of Gum Street neighborhood where he and his family had lived since the early ‘60s on the spring afternoon when he was approached by Munguia.
The young man later told investigators that he thought about killing Underwood for a few minutes before stabbing him.
“When asked if he knew it was wrong, Hector stated he did, but he didn’t care,” according to court documents.
He stabbed him a several times before running away.
Benton County deputies were initially called to Underwood’s home by a family member who said he was bleeding heavily, according to dispatch reports at the time.
By the time police arrived, Underwood had died. Police found a bloody palm print on the fence separating the Underwood’s and Munguia’s property, according to court records.
2019 stabbing
The April 2022 attack was not the first time Munguia was accused of attacking someone with seemingly little reason, according to court documents.
Three years ago, he was convicted of an equally mysterious stabbing of a 70-year-old woman just a mile from where Underwood was killed.
Munguia was 16 at the time.
That attack happened just before 5 p.m. in December 2019, when he approached Lydia Cassaway as she was getting out of her car at an apartment building on South Washington Street.
He asked her for money, but Cassaway told him she didn’t carry any cash. He told her that he was hungry.
“He then asked her if he could tell her something. She said, ‘OK,” and his response was to poke her with something in back,” Kennewick police wrote in a report at the time.
She screamed and the teen ran off. Then, she started feeling pain in her back and noticed she was bleeding, but it was only after she ran to a safe spot that she realized she had been stabbed. Her wound was not life threatening.
Police caught him because he was suspected of stealing beer from a nearby Circle K.
Munguia was convicted of second-degree assault and sentenced to a Washington juvenile justice facility for up to 2 1/2 years.
Editor’s Note: A previous version of this article incorrectly listed a court commissioner as presiding over the sentencing.
