I-90 murder results in 30-year sentence

A Mexican immigrant who murdered the mother of their young son after an argument while they were driving on Interstate 90 was sentenced Monday to nearly 30 years in prison.

Manuel Argomaniz Camargo confessed to murdering his longtime girlfriend Ana Montelongo Garcia and leaving her nearly naked body along the roadside near the Odessa exit last March.

He told Adams County detectives at the time of the murder he had been taking cocaine and methamphetamine to stay awake on the drive from Chicago to Moses Lake, and became convinced Garcia was a witch making the car malfunction. He killed her while their 3-year-old son Hector was in the car.

A Spokesman-Review investigation showed Camargo had been in the country illegally for about four years, and avoided deportation despite encounters with federal and local law enforcement officials. Garcia’s mother said if he’d been deported in one of those cases, as federal law allows, her daughter would have never been murdered.

The sentence was recommended by state prosecutors, who reached a plea bargain with Camargo to spare the family the ordeal of a trial, Attorney General Bob Ferguson said.