EUGENE OR April 28 2019 — A judge Thursday gave Edwin Enoc Lara, a former college campus security officer, a federal life sentence for terrorizing a 19-year-old woman for almost 10 hours by carjacking her at gunpoint in Salem and forcing her to accompany him to California after having killed a Bend woman.

U.S. District Judge Michael J. McShane veered from sentencing guidelines that allowed for up to 20 years in prison and increased the penalty range by six levels to issue the life sentence for Lara’s “brutal crime spree’’ in July 2016, calling him an “extreme danger to the community.’’

The uncommon federal sentence marks Lara’s second life prison term.

The 34-year-old former criminal justice major was sentenced in state court last year to life in prison without the possibility for parole for the July 24, 2016, sexual assault, kidnapping and killing of Kaylee Sawyer, 23, of Bend. The federal sentence will run at the same time as the state sentence.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Nathan J. Lichvarcik called Lara “one of the most dangerous men who has walked through this courthouse.’’

The prosecutor said Lara deserved a metaphorical “federal lock’’ on his prison door in the unforeseen case that his state true life term was ever overturned or shortened through a future challenge.

Lichvarcik said the victim in the case must be “absolutely certain that he will never step foot freely on this earth.’’

Aundreah Elizabeth Maes, sitting between her mother and the prosecutor, addressed the judge briefly during the hearing in Eugene after Lara had pleaded guilty to her carjacking and kidnapping.

“You thought you stole my life from me, but I’m not a victim. I’m a survivor … I’m a warrior,’’ she said. “I’m stronger than I’ve ever been, and you’re going to rot where you belong.’’

Defense lawyer Mark Sabitt had argued that a federal sentence was unnecessary considering the state’s life term.

Lara’s three-day crime spree was “an enigma’’ and can only be explained by his client’s genetic degenerative cognitive brain disability, identified in a recent evaluation, Sabitt said. He dismissed the prosecution’s characterization of Lara as a potential serial killer or psychopath.

“It’s virtually certain he will die in prison,’’ Sabitt said.

Sabitt urged the judge to adopt the sentence of 20 years recommended by federal probation officials.

The father of the woman Lara killed, her stepmother and grandparents also attended the hearing.

The prosecutor described how Lara told others of his “urge to kill’’ and how he “hunted” for a carjacking victim in Salem while on the run from his fatal beating of Sawyer. He found Maes sitting in a gold Volvo 850 in the parking lot of a Ross store on July 25, 2016. He opened the passenger door, pointed a gun at her and demanded she drive.

While Maes drove, Lara showed her pictures of him in uniform as a campus security officer for Central Oregon Community College and news reports about the 23-year-old woman he’d just killed. He ordered Maes to stop at the Relax Inn in Cottage Grove at 11:39 p.m.

There, he handcuffed Maes to the bathroom door, covered her head with a shirt while he took a shower and then said it was her turn to shower. Crying, she objected. Unable to remove the cuffs from the door, he broke off the door knob. With her hands cuffed behind her back, he forced her into one of two beds, made her swallow two sleeping pills and crawled in beside her, the prosecutor said.

Lara asked the 19-year-old if she was a virgin and started sucking on her earlobe.

Through tears, the young woman made up a story — telling Lara that she had contracted a sexually transmitted disease from her boyfriend. Her quick-thinking likely was the only reason Lara didn’t sexually assault her, the prosecutor said.

At one point, Lara shared with Maes, “Right now I have that urge just to walk out with my gun and just shoot everybody in this motel.”

Fearful police were after him, Lara suddenly left the motel with Maes at 1:26 a.m. They drove until 5 a.m. stopping at a Super 8 motel in Yreka, Calif., where Lara walked with Maes toward a 73-year-old motorist sitting in a parked car and shot him point blank in the abdomen when he wouldn’t give up his vehicle.

Lara fled with Maes on foot to a nearby gas station, where he carjacked a 76-year-old woman. The woman and her two teenage grandsons remained inside the car. He eventually forced the three out and continued driving south with Maes.

At one point, Lara videotaped himself using the 19-year-old’s cellphone and ordered her to post the video on her Facebook page with the caption, “Murderer on the loose and Kidnapped.’’ At 6:40 a.m. on July 26, 2016, he called 911 and said he was wanted for murder. He was arrested a short time later, armed and wearing a bulletproof vest.

Before Lara addressed the judge at Thursday’s sentencing, Maes and Sawyer’s father and stepmother walked out of the courtroom to avoid hearing him speak.

Lara, in an orange-striped jail suit, told the judge that he’s cried for three years but doesn’t anymore. He said his prior statements to police were made only because he “just wanted to go home.’’

“I’m sorry for what happened. I wish I could take everything back. I wish I could have stopped it,’’ he said. “I don’t know what happened. … I was never this kind of guy.’’

According to his lawyer, Lara, a Honduras native, came to the United States 28 years ago. He comes from an impoverished family and lived through gang violence in Los Angeles before moving to Madras. Drug and alcohol abuse caused him to drop out of Madras High School, but he later obtained a GED, an associate degree in criminal justice from Central Oregon Community College and a bachelor’s degree from Portland State University. He has legal status in the United States but isn’t a citizen, meaning he’d face deportation if he ever was released from custody.

During a search of Lara’s home in Redmond, which he shared in 2016 with his wife, then a new Bend police officer, authorities found a class project that Lara had done about serial killer Angel Resendez Ramirez.

Lara wrote that Ramirez “always killed with a blunt force trauma” and used “weapons of opportunity” found at the scene. Lara killed Sawyer in an eerily similar fashion, “with a rock found at the scene,” Lichvarcik noted in his sentencing memo. Sawyer died from blunt force trauma.

The judge said he took into account Lara’s three-day criminal episode, the terrorizing of Maes over a protracted period, his shooting of another man and carjacking another family in front of her.

Charges for the shooting and carjacking in California are still pending, but any sentence there also would run concurrently with the Oregon cases under his plea deal.

The judge’s voice quivered with emotion as he turned his attention to Lara’s victims.

He credited Maes for her extreme courage and strength and thanked Sawyer’s father and stepmother for one of the most difficult letters he’s ever had to read as a judge. He said he was particularly moved that Sawyer’s parents looked beyond their own loss and said they would also pray for the judge’s strength in this case.

“I’m deeply sorry for what’s occurred,’’ McShane told them. “I wish I could change things. I can’t.’’

OregonLive.com 

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