Five and a half years after a man was shot to death in a remote area of Oconto County, the trial of his accused killer got underway Sept. 28.
Manuel Antonio Herrera-Hernandez, 37, a former Green Bay man whose address is now listed as the Oconto County Jail, is charged with first-degree intentional homicide in connection with the February 2021 death of Miguel Gutierrez “Grande” Palomera, a 35-year-old man previously identified by authorities only by his initials, MGP.
Herrera-Hernandez, who was free on bail on drug trafficking charges, was arrested three months later and has been held since then in lieu of $2 million cash bail.
Oconto County District Attorney Joshua Dryak said in his opening remarks that Herrera-Hernandez, also known as “Manny,” had been arrested in October 2020 with nearly a half-pound of methamphetamine and several bags of marijuana.
Dryak said Herrera-Hernandez owed money to Francisco “Pancho” Cortez-Mendez, whom he described as a mid-level drug dealer who oversaw distribution in the Green Bay area, and that Palomera owed a great deal more.
“Pancho sends down the order: ‘Manny, either get Grande to repay the money, or kill him,’” Dryak said.
The DA said on Feb. 21, 2021, Herrera-Hernandez and his then-girlfriend, Mara Vance, picked up Palomera and drove to a DNR lot off a dead-end road in the Town of Little Suamico, identified in the criminal complaint as the parking area of the Green Bay Shores State Wildlife Area on Lade Beach Road.
They had an “animated and angry” conversation in Spanish, Dryak said Vance would testify.
“Grande ran out of people to call, ran out of time to get that money,” Dryak said, “and Manny shot him, because he was following orders and in an attempt to wipe out his own debt to Pancho.”
Herrera-Hernandez didn’t shoot him just once, but kept shooting “until the slide locked back and he couldn’t shoot him anymore,” the DA said.
The break in the case came in May 2021 when Herrera-Hernandez and Vance were arrested during a traffic stop in Green Bay. The criminal complaint indicates that 44.71 grams of fentanyl and 360.93 grams of methamphetamine were seized from the car.
During the initial interview with Vance, she told investigators Herrera-Hernandez admitted to her that he had shot and killed Palomera, according to the homicide complaint.
Attorney Abigail Ruckdashel, who gave the opening statement for the defense, acknowledged that the defendant and the witnesses who are tied to the crime are all part of the criminal underworld, and as a result their testimony couldn’t be predicted.
“We know what they said to the cops; we have no idea what they’re going to get up on the witness stand and say, so I’m not up here to say, ‘You’re going to hear this,’ because the truth of the matter is we don’t know,” Ruckdashel said. “The truth of the matter is they might not know. The truth of the matter is they might be lying. The truth of the matter is they might not remember — this all happened more than five years ago.”
She added that the jury will not hear about a gun, because the weapon that killed Palomera has never been found, and the only evidence that ties the defendant to the death is “a measly cigarette butt in the middle of nowhere.”
According to the criminal complaint, Herrera-Hernandez told police there was a struggle for the weapon and “the gun just went off.” Ruckdashel suggested the confession may not carry as much weight as the prosecution contends.
“Mr. Herrera was in a position that not many of us here have ever been in our entire lives and probably won’t be in,” she said, “an impossible situation where one choice gets you killed and one choice sends you to prison.”
Online court records indicate that Cortez-Mendez has been convicted in a variety of cases related to drug trafficking and is currently serving a sentence at Racine Correctional Institution in Sturtevant.
At the time of the murder, Herrera-Hernandez was free after posting bail on felony charges of possession with intent to deliver amphetamine and bail jumping and misdemeanor counts of possession of THC and possession of drug paraphernalia. Those charges were consolidated into the homicide case for trial.
The case attracted some political attention after then-U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher said the suspect should never have been in America in the first place, citing reports he was an deported as an illegal alien in 2013 and charged with illegal reentry in 2018.
