Man convicted of murder in Auburn sentenced for armed robbery of Tacoma coffee stand
A 30-year-old man convicted of murder last year in King County for shooting a worker during a robbery attempt at a repair shop appeared in Pierce County Superior Court last week to be sentenced for his role in a violent Tacoma robbery.
Rigoberto Alvarado Jr. pleaded guilty June 26 to second-degree robbery, residential burglary and theft of a motor vehicle for being the getaway driver in a July 31, 2017 stickup at a coffee stand on Marine View Drive. Superior Court Judge Pro Tempore James Orlando sentenced him to seven years in prison.
He will serve that sentence at the same time as the 58-year prison sentence King County Superior Court Judge Joe Campagna gave him Oct. 26 last year, according to court records.
That punishment came after a jury found him guilty of first-degree murder, first-degree assault and first-degree unlawful possession of a firearm in the March 31, 2020 killing of Gregory Deckman and assault on his coworker in Auburn.
In the Tacoma case, Alvarado drove Dominique Reyes to the coffee stand in a stolen Ford Mustang and waited outside while Reyes broke through the stand’s window and assaulted a barista, a 20-year-old woman, who was the only person working there that night. According to charging documents, Reyes hit the worker more than 50 times while trying to get her to open the cash register and a safe.
At some point during the attack, the barista smashed a cup on Reyes’ head. In return, the robber shot the woman in the leg, and records state Reyes continued to beat her after she was shot. Reyes stole cash from the tip jar and then fled with Alvarado Jr. in the Mustang.
The car was found crashed less than a half mile from the coffee stand, and investigators determined that Alvarado entered a woman’s home, took the keys to her Toyota RAV-4 and stole the vehicle from her open garage.
No one was immediately arrested in the robbery. Tacoma Police Department detectives identified Reyes and Alvarado Jr. as suspects a year later using fingerprints lifted from the Mustang and DNA from a torn and bloodied pink tank top that a police dog found while searching for the robbers.
A week before prosecutors charged the pair in 2020, Alvarado was arrested by Auburn police on suspicion of murder. Alvarado has a criminal history that includes 13 prior felony convictions, records show, and according to the Seattle Times, he was released from state prison just two weeks before he killed Deckman.
Reyes had already served a prison sentence in a separate case and was out of custody by the time she was charged in the Tacoma robbery, her defense attorney previously told The News Tribune. She pleaded guilty to first-degree assault in the case in 2022 and was sentenced in January to nine years in prison.
