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Attorneys and Judge Kaleb Cockrum met privately today to discuss the possibility of a pre-trial settlement for murder suspects Bronson Moon Lewis Jr. and Daniel Armendariz III.
“This is not a plea agreement,” the judge said after emerging from a more than 30-minute session with Deputy District Attorney Trent Timm and defense attorneys Russ Clanton and Jennifer Dixon. But he said all lawyers “negotiated in good faith” about “the parameters of what a plea agreement might look like.”
Lewis and Armendariz, both 20, are charged with the July 2020 murder of Hoopa resident Julius “Jules” Tripp, who was sleeping in a camper along Highway 96 when Lewis, Armendariz and three other people drove up.
The man driving Lewis’s truck allegedly bumped the camper and woke Tripp. The ensuing confrontation allegedly ended with Tripp first being attacked with a knife, then lying over a roadside bank with his hand or arm cut off while Lewis and the others drove to Hoopa and Lewis got an assault rifle.
Lewis and Armendariz allegedly went down the bank and Tripp was finished off with a gunshot. Lewis was arrested first, with Armendariz jailed weeks later after information about his role was revealed during Lewis’s preliminary hearing.
Tripp, 42, was reported missing on July 26, 2020. His remains weren’t found until almost a month later, after people involved in the incident reported it to authorities.
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