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A 31-year-old Lincoln man was sentenced to life in prison Tuesday for shooting his 18-year-old neighbor to death last year on his doorstep in a dispute that started over an unleashed dog.
"This was, by all accounts I think, a senseless tragedy and loss of life of this young man," Lancaster County District Judge Susan Strong told Arman Rejai asJulian Martinez's friends and family watched from the rows behind.
Rejai had faced a minimum of 20 years in prison for the second-degree murder of Martinez on Jan. 21, 2023.
He pleaded no contest.
Rejai, who submitted a private letter to the judge as did his public defender, spoke briefly Tuesday, saying he was very sorry for the loss of Martinez due to his actions.
"I wasn't trying to start anything. At the time, I was very afraid, and I believed that I was acting in self defense," he said.
Rejai said Martinez's family is in his prayers, and he prays for forgiveness.
Moments earlier, when given a chance to speak, Erica Martinez stood near the front of the courtroom, faced Rejai and said she wanted him to know he didn't just affect one person.
"You affected all of our lives," she said. "My son was my No. 1. He was my knight in shining armor. He was our protector for me and the girls, his sisters."
Erica Martinez said this is something she never thought she would go through.
"Something you would see on TV. Something you would read in the papers. But not as something that would happen to you and your family," she said.
Now, there's an empty void in their lives that they're never going to get back.
"What comes comes. And you need to serve what you need to serve. What you did was wrong," Erica Martinez told Rejai. "This is something you're going to have to live with the rest of your life, and I will have to live with this for the rest of my life, also. I just want you to realize that."
According to the lead Lincoln police investigator, Rejai was taking his dog on a walk Jan. 21, 2023, near South 17th Street and Euclid Avenue when he got into an argument with his next-door neighbors about their dog being off the leash in their backyard.
Police said Rejai went inside but could hear them outside yelling, wanting him to fight. He came out and shot them with pepper spray, went back inside, locked the deadbolt and grabbed his Glock 26.
Martinez was at his door, pounding on it, when Rejai opened his door and shot Martinez once before shutting and locking his door again and calling 911.
Martinez's roommates did CPR to try to save him, but he was pronounced dead at a hospital.
On Tuesday, Strong said she was sorry for Martinez's family's loss and regretted that she could do nothing to bring him back to them or ease their suffering.
She said that after reviewing everything in the case, she kept coming back to one thing: That all of this tragedy was caused by Rejai's actions.
"Mr. Martinez did nothing wrong that day," the judge said.
She said it was Rejai who began a disagreement about having a dog on a leash and started an argument with the teenagers next door, yelling obscenities at them.
It was Rejai who went into his house and came back out, used pepper spray on them, then ran back to his house and got his gun.
When he heard knocking and pounding on his door, he looked out and saw Martinez. The knocking stopped after a couple of minutes, but Rejai didn't let it end there, Strong said.
"It was you that for some reason decided to open the door and shoot and kill this unarmed 18-year-old young man," she said.
Strong said everyone has a right to self-defense and to own and carry firearms, but this was not a case of self-defense.
She said Rejai had an arsenal of firearms in his house and a history of not getting along with his neighbors, which included threatening to burn down one couple's home and kill them, shooting guns out his front window when he lived in Eagle and yelling obscenities at a young girl for playing in his yard on a swing set.
Strong said there even was an anonymous report that he had threatened to kill someone in jail.
"All of these things lead me to believe that you are a violent, dangerous person who should not be in the community," she said, announcing the life sentence.
After the judge walked out, Martinez's family and friends hugged. Some cried.
Martinez had attended Lincoln Public Schools and worked at the Knolls Retirement Center, where he found his passion in life in helping and working with the elderly, according to his obituary.
Remembering Lincoln's homicide victims of 2023
1. Julian A. Martinez
2. Rudy Requejo Jr.
3. Ronald Gonzalez Rivas
4. Christopher Karmazin
5. Damien Brave
6. Mark Kruger
7. Zachary Svoboda
8. James Baylor
9. Larry Cole
Reach the writer at 402-473-7237 or lpilger@journalstar.com.
On Twitter @LJSpilger
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Lori Pilger
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