Suspect arrested in shooting death of Modesto dairy worker found in his car on Jan. 1
A Bay Area man has been charged with murder in the death of a Modesto man who was shot in the head just after finishing a graveyard shift at a dairy on New Year’s Day.
Teodoro “Teo” Gutierrez, 52, was found dead inside his vehicle in a field northeast of Carpenter Road and Monte Vista Avenue at about 10:17 a.m. Shattered glass and shell casings from two different caliber bullets were found at the intersection; tire tread showed the northeasterly path Gutierrez’s vehicle took from the intersection into the field.
The dairy where Gutierrez worked was just a half a mile away. He’d left at the end of his shift around 8:12 a.m., two hours before he was found, but the fog was very thick. Even Gutierrez’s co-worker, who’d left work five minutes after Gutierrez, told detectives he didn’t see anything as he traveled the same path east on Monte Vista.
Last week Stanislaus County Sheriff’s detectives arrested 39-year-old Eric David Mills and the District Attorney’s Office charged him with first degree murder of Gutierrez, being a felon in possession of a firearm and possession of an assault rifle.
Mills also faces enhancements for acting with premeditation and using a firearm and a special circumstance of lying in wait, which makes him eligible for the death penalty. During Mills’ second court appearance Monday, Deputy District Attorney Wendell Emerson said a decision had not yet been made about whether to pursue the death penalty or life in prison without the possibility parole.
According to a criminal complaint, Mills had two prior convictions for burglary in San Mateo County in 2002 and 2016. In 2018, he was facing 25 years to life in prison for third strike charges related to threatening loss prevention officers at a Redwood City Home Depot with a knife while stealing merchandise, according to The Daily Journal. Instead, he was sentenced to 16 months in prison for pleading no contest to making criminal threats, the newspaper reported.
Mills was out on parole for that conviction when Gutierrez was killed.
Family and friends of Gutierrez described him as a humble, hard working man who didn’t have any enemies and avoided confrontation, according to an affidavit in support of Mills’ arrest.
Mills was on detectives’ radar early in the investigation. Gutierrez’s girlfriend told detectives Mills was a former roommate whom they’d kicked out six months earlier due to his drug use. She said Mills threatened to kill Gutierrez but they never made a police report, according to the arrest affidavit.
Another witness told detectives she overheard Mills telling a mutual friend he ‘murked’ a guy named Theodore, a slang term for murder, according to the arrest affidavit.
The witness said Mills claimed he did it because ‘Theodore’ was a child molester.
Detectives learned Mills had rented a vehicle from an AVIS in San Jose two days before the homicide and had failed to return it. They also learned he was living with his girlfriend in Palo Alto.
Stanislaus detectives notified Palo Alto police and on Jan. 30 a Palo Alto officer located Mills and the rental car. There was a 9 mm handgun in the vehicle and at the apartment Mills shared with his girlfriend officers found 9 mm ammunition, the same caliber as one of the shell casings located at the homicide scene, according to the arrest affidavit. At the apartment authorities also seized a semi-automatic handgun with an extended magazine.
Mills was booked into the Santa Clara County Jail that day on multiple firearms charges and also had warrants for his arrest out of San Mateo County on firearms charges, possessing burglary tools and being a parolee at large.
Dalton Gonzalez, the detective who wrote the arrest affidavit, detailed multiple recorded phone conversations Mills had while in the Santa Clara County Jail.
“It is clear through the jail phone calls Mills is coercing (people) ... to make a false claim the handgun was not Mills’,” Gonzalez wrote. The affidavit described conversations in which Mills tells people to say they saw his girlfriend put what appeared to be a gun in his car.
Mills also called CPS while in jail to report that his girlfriend was sexually abusing her son and told others to do the same, similar to the unsubstantiated claims he made about Gutierrez.
Gonzalez wrote the arrest affidavit in April, when Mills was still in the Santa Clara County Jail. In June Mills was booked into San Mateo County Jail for the pending charges there.
“At the conclusion of those legal matters in San Mateo we took him into custody for our warrant for murder and transported him here last Tuesday,” said Sgt. Erich Layton, a spokesperson for the department.
Mills has pleaded not guilty to the charges. The deputy public defender representing him said during the hearing Monday that Mills was interested in having the case move swiftly and anticipated a preliminary hearing could be scheduled at the next court date on Aug. 31.
A representative from the Stanislaus County Public Defender’s office declined to comment on the case, instead referring to a county spokesperson.
Authorities ask anyone with information about the case to contact Detective Gonzalez by calling 209-567-4466.
This story was originally published August 4, 2021 at 4:00 AM.
