Thursday, November 20, 2008

Hours before he was set to go to trial on Tuesday, Manuel Prieto Arenas pleaded guilty to the 2007 murder of his girlfriend outside their Key Largo trailer.

Under the deal, worked out early Tuesday afternoon, Arenas copped to second-degree murder, an offense carrying a sentence of 30 years to life.

The state had planned to try Arenas, 48, for first-degree murder, a charge that carries a mandatory life sentence.

On July 6, 2007, Arenas led police on a daylong manhunt after shooting Maria Elena Proenza, 39, in front of her mother.

The shooting left Proenza's body sprawled on the edge of a driveway in Key Largo's Hibiscus Park neighborhood.

Chief Assistant State Attorney Catherine Vogel said the eleventh-hour plea deal was reasonable, considering the nature of the crime, and was one that all of Proenza's family supported. The plea spared Proenza's mother, Maria Lastra, the ordeal of recounting her daughter's murder on the witness stand.

At the sentencing hearing, expected sometime in December, the state still plans to ask that Arenas serve life.

"Personally, I was disappointed," Vogel said. "I had all my witnesses there. I had all this evidence. But I hate to make it sound like sport. Had I tried it, it would have been selfish. I would have been doing it for me and not for the criminal justice system."

Arenas' attorney, Chief Assistant Public Defender Michael Strickland, said the deal had been discussed from time to time in the lead-up to Tuesday.

"I just thought it was in his best interest rather than proceeding to trial," he said.

Arenas and Proenza had lived together in the south Central Florida town of Moore Haven, Strickland said last week.

When they broke up, Arenas moved to Key Largo, leaving her in their Moore Haven abode while he took their jointly owned mobile home.

Lastra and Proenza were in Key Largo to retrieve the mobile home when the killing occurred, Strickland said.

rsilk@keysnews.com