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Vasquez guilty

Jury options: death or life without parole

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A McClain County jury deliberated four hours Monday before returning guilty verdicts on four counts – including two for first-degree murder – against Daniel Vasquez.

Testimony in the sentencing phase of his trial began Tuesday afternoon.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

The other felony counts for which he was convicted  are unlawful removal of a dead body and pattern of criminal offenses.

Jurors recommended a term of five years and a $5,000 fine on the first and two years and $25,000 fine on the second.

Vasquez, of Oklahoma City, is the first of three defendants to be tried in the 2018 murders of Shaliyah Toombs and her unborn child.

According to an affidavit, Toombs, who was seven months pregnant, was reported missing from an apartment in southwest Oklahoma City on April 29, 2018.

On May 2, 2018, Vasquez was driving a pickup belonging to co-defendant Joshua Finkbeiner, 33, and ran out of gas south of the Goldsby exit on I-35.

He walked to the Love’s on State Highway 9 West where he contacted a Chickasaw Lighthorse Police officer and told him there was a murder victim in the pickup.

McClain County sheriff’s deputies found Toombs’ body in the pickup’s back floorboard.

Finkbeiner, of Oppelo, Ark., and Staci Harjo, 45, of Oklahoma City, were arrested in Arkansas and returned to Oklahoma.

Prosecutors here charged Finkbeiner with two counts each of first-degree murder and conspiracy, kidnapping and pattern of criminal offenses.

Harjo is charged with two counts of conspiracy, possession of a firearm after a former felony conviction, kidnapping and pattern of criminal offenses.

Their trials are scheduled for 2022.

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