Friday, Feb. 9, 2018 | 6:15 p.m.
Last month, Eric Jesus Martinez flagged down a Southern California sheriff’s deputy, asking him for his phone number “so he could contact him if he needed to talk.”
The chilling phone call from the 32-year-old came later that day — on Jan. 23.
Martinez confessed to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputy that almost five years earlier, voices in his head told him to kill a man, so he’d stabbed him roughly 100 times with a 4-inch blade, according to a Metro Police arrest warrant released Friday.
That man was Ronald Gray, who died May 11, 2013, in front of the Salvation Army, 33 W. Owens Ave., police said.
The warrant in Clark County was issued that day and Martinez on Thursday was booked on one count of murder at the Clark County Detention Center, jail and court logs show.
During the phone call, Martinez told the sheriff’s deputy that in May that year, he “murdered” an older man at the Owens Avenue and Main Street intersection. And that voices in his head told him to do it, police said.
Some of the details of Ronald Gray’s death provided by Martinez — his age, location of the slaying and length of the weapon — would likely only be known to investigators and the suspect, a Metro homicide detective wrote on the court document.
The warrant shows that a 4-inch knife with Gray’s blood was found three days after his death, and investigators had a suspect description, a clean-shaven Hispanic man, about 20 to 25 years old, who wore a blue baseball cap and a blue jogging suit, and rode a silver BMX bike, police said.
Martinez, who is being held without the possibility of bail, will face a judge Monday morning, jail logs show.
