State drops killing charge

Man jailed since March released

RALEIGH -- Miguel Angel Goytortua walked out of jail Monday afternoon, no longer weighted down by the murder charge he faced for nine months after a popular produce vendor was found shot to death at a local flea market.

Minutes before Goytortua's trial was scheduled to start Monday, a Wake prosecutor filed a single- page document dismissing the murder charge.

The reason: important witnesses in the cases disappeared from the radar of Raleigh police detectives.

"I'm not real happy about it," said Adam Moyers, the Wake assistant district attorney who dismissed the murder charge.

But Goytortua was, his joy evident as he hugged a friend after walking out of jail as a free man. The 22-year-old declined to speak to reporters.

He had been in jail since March 25, when Pablo Ambriz Ponce, 42, was found shot to death on a cot at the back of his produce stand at Watson's Flea Market, a busy outdoor market on Rock Quarry Road in Southeast Raleigh.

Goytortua worked for a competing stand and police arrested him the day of Ponce's death. Few details, including the motive police thought was behind the killing, have been released to the public.

On Monday, Goytortua's attorneys said that police never had the real killer and that Goytortua had maintained his innocence all along.

"He happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time," said Johnny Gaskins, Goytortua's attorney. Instead, Gaskins said, Ponce had been involved in drug dealing and had told his wife that another man had been after him an hour before his death. Ponce's sons disputed Gaskins' version of the killing.

They had heard rumors of their father's involvement with the drug trade, but they attributed it to people who were jealous of his success.

Moyers wouldn't say whether Goytortua remains the primary suspect or whether the investigation would take a different direction.

"Further investigation is necessary and pending," Moyers said.

At Watson's on Monday, two of Ponce's six sons worked at the produce stand where their father died, selling buckets of tomatoes, jalapenos and bunches of cilantro to a small stream of customers. Neither Oscar nor Hector Ponce knew that charges had been dropped against Goytortua until a reporter informed them.

They had never been contacted about the upcoming trial, said Oscar Ponce, the eldest son at 26. The youngest son is now 7 years old and lives with their mother, Gudelia Martinez.

"We didn't know anything about it," Oscar Ponce said.

Letter to family

Moyers said he had sent a letter to the family and tried unsuccessfully to call them but never heard back from them.

The Ponce brothers had noticed that Jose Cortez, the owner of the rival produce stand where Goytortua worked, had been absent the past few days. They had heard this past weekend, when the market is the busiest, that someone was looking for that owner and wondered whether he was the witness that prosecutors needed.

Moyers would not say which witnesses were missing. Cortez also lived with Goytortua and asked a judge last year to give him $58,000 that investigators seized from their Maidenhair Drive home, Moyers said. Cortez maintained that the money was his, and not Goytortua's. The judge agreed, and Cortez was given the money.

Customers routinely ask the Ponce brothers about the status of the case. The 42-year-old man was well-known in the area, and promoted Latino music events at Raleigh's Disco Rodeo and N.C. State Fairgrounds. He also worked for several years at Que Pasa, a Spanish-language radio station. He got along with other vendors, except for the owner's of the rival stand where Goytortua worked, Oscar Ponce said.

"He always used to say there's enough for everybody," Oscar Ponce said.

Greeting to customers

Pablo Ponce, who came to the United States at age 12 from the Mexican state of Michoacan, ran the produce stand for the last year of his life. After his death, his sons upgraded the outdoor stand, pouring a concrete floor and installing crates to display the vegetables, tortillas and music they sell.

Their father's words greet every customer, with a phrase he often uttered etched into the concrete floor -- "Nunca deja nada para manana (Never leave anything for tomorrow)."

Before he died, he told his sons he was getting tired of the long days, sometimes working from 4 a.m. to 11 p.m., and wanted to return to Mexico. He wanted his two youngest sons to see the country, which they had never known.

But Ponce's death ended those plans.

"I never would have expected this," Oscar Ponce said, his eyes tearing up at the thought of his father.

(News researcher Denise Jones contributed to this report.)