He killed someone and kept the secret for two years, police say

David Gallegos kept the night he allegedly killed someone a secret for two years.

He didn’t tell anyone about the bad high he experienced sitting in the bushes at Seeley Lake Park in Lakewood. He didn’t talk about his paranoia or the man in the blue truck he was convinced was following him. He never let on about the big knife he allegedly used on the man, or that it was seized by police two weeks after the murder when he was stopped on the street.

Until earlier this month.

That’s when Gallegos, 30, confided in a friend “something he had never told anyone,” records show.

He told his story about what happened on Aug. 27, 2015, when the voices in his head became too much.

Gallegos “said the driver had no chance,” according to court documents.

The driver was Daniel Guerin, 36. He was found later that night next to his 2003 Chevrolet pickup truck, dead from multiple stab wounds.

Police had no idea who killed him, or why.

They had a passerby who stumbled across the body but hadn’t seen anything. They had poor surveillance video that showed a pedestrian walk into the park six minutes before Guerin drove in his truck. The video didn’t capture the pedestrian leaving or what happened by Guerin’s truck.

And so the case went cold.

Vicky Jordan, Guerin’s mother, pleaded for help from the public.

She described her son as suffering from physical and mental health problems, but said he had worked in construction for eight years and loved riding dirt bikes.

“He was a sweet, sweet soul,” Jordan said.

Detectives believe Guerin was planning to sleep at the park in his truck, which he was known to do.

Earlier this month, one of Gallegos’ friends told police he’d confessed to the homicide and said it happened while he was on drugs.

“He explained that he was sitting in some bushes on a bad high when he saw a car pull into the lot,” Pierce County Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Jesse Williams wrote in charging papers. “He was hearing voices in his head and thought the driver was following him, so he ran up on the driver and began stabbing him.”

Gallegos said he then fled from the park down a path rather than the main entrance.

Although his friend struggled with turning him in, the friend described Gallegos as “violent, unpredictable and capable of committing such an offense.”

Police began investigating Gallegos and determined he was staying at a mental health facility about 150 yards from Seeley Lake at the time Guerin was killed.

It is not a lockdown facility and Gallegos would have had the freedom to come and go.

Investigators also found Gallegos was stopped in the area by police 16 days after the slaying and had a large kitchen knife on him. The officer who spoke with Gallegos that day took the weapon and it was later destroyed.

Eventually, Gallegos’ friend agreed to wear a wiretap and get Gallegos talking about the night he allegedly killed Guerin.

Police arrested him Wednesday. Prosecutors have charged him with second-degree murder and he is expected to enter a plea Thursday afternoon.

This story was originally published June 15, 2017 at 2:53 PM with the headline "He killed someone and kept the secret for two years, police say."