Honduran faces execution tonight for Arlington killing

AUSTIN — Heliberto Chi, a Honduran native who led authorities on a six-week manhunt after gunning down an Arlington clothing-store manager in 2001, moved one step closer to execution Wednesday when the state’s highest criminal court rejected his bid for a stay.

Chi, condemned for killing Armand Paliotta during an after-hours robbery of the K&G Men’s Superstore in Arlington, will be put to death tonight in Huntsville unless his lawyers can persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to spare his life.

Arlington attorney Wes Ball said the odds are against Chi because Ball’s argument is similar to the one the justices rejected late Tuesday when they allowed the execution of Mexican national Jose Ernesto Medellin to go forward.

"The court went 5-4 against Medellin, so we’ll have to turn one justice to our side," Ball said.

Medellin’s case rested on the fact that he was not notified that he had the right under international treaty to visit with a Mexican consular representative after his arrest. Chi likewise was not notified of that right, but Ball said his client will also argue that the United States has a separate treaty with Honduras that ensures each country’s citizens will be notified of their right to consular help if they are arrested abroad.

The crime

Chi had once worked at the clothing store and returned during the day on March 24, 2001, to visit with former co-workers. Just after the store closed at 9 p.m. on that Saturday, he returned and knocked on the locked door.

"I know this guy," Paliotta reportedly said to the others before unlocking the door. "He used to work here."

Once inside, Chi drew a silver revolver and grabbed from Paliotta a bag containing about $6,000 in cash and $7,000 in checks, according to court testimony. Paliotta pushed two co-workers away from Chi and ran toward the door. He was shot in the back.

Chi chased cashier Adrian Riojas, then 19, to the rear of the store and shot him in the back.

Employee Gloria Chavez hid in the clothing racks. "I thought that he was going to shoot all of us," she would later say.

After Chi fled with the money, Riojas called 911.

"Please, ma’am, hurry. I don’t want to die," he was heard saying on the 911 tape. "Please. Please."

The same tape contains Chavez’s voice: "Adrian, Adrian. I think Armand is dying."

On the run

Store employees soon identified Chi in a photo lineup. But it took weeks, and at least some luck, to round up Chi and his accomplice.

Police believe that Hugo Alejandro Sierra, then 20 and living in Dallas, paid friends for the use of a pickup and revolver and drove the truck to and from the store with Chi.

Three days after the killing, the truck was spotted at a Dallas apartment complex. Hugo Sierra was arrested inside one unit, and the gun used in the shootings was found.

Police also learned that Chi’s father had bought a 1995 Isuzu Trooper for his son. According to investigators, Chi and his girlfriend, Erika Sierra, then 18 and the sister of Hugo Sierra, drove the truck to Minnesota, where both applied for driver’s licenses, and later to Chicago, Iowa, New York and Washington, D.C., before heading to Southern California.

Police finally caught up with them in early May 2001 when Erika Sierra walked into the West Valley Community Police Station near Los Angeles and told detectives that her boyfriend, who she said had assaulted her, was wanted on a murder charge in Texas.

Detectives confirmed Sierra’s report by visiting the Web site of TV’s America’s Most Wanted.

Chi was arrested near Los Angeles one day before he had planned to board a bus and return to Honduras, police said later.

'He was my friend’

Armand Paliotta was the descendant of Italian immigrants who moved from New York to the Dallas area about 20 years before his death. His wife, Acela, came to America from Cuba. His co-workers at the Arlington men’s store recalled him as fun-loving and kindhearted.

"He was my friend, and I’ll always remember him as a good man," said Abdon Hernandez, a Mexican immigrant who still works as a tailor in the shop where Paliotta died. "He was very good to me. He was very good to the immigrant community. He loved the Hispanic culture. It’s very painful to me that he was killed by someone who was an immigrant."

In an interview with the Star-Telegram shortly after her husband’s death, Acela Paliotta shared that sentiment. At the time, she was the coordinator of English as a second language, bilingual and foreign language programs for the Hurst-Euless-Bedford school district.

"I don’t want to forget what it’s like to be an immigrant so I can minister to them," she said. "I treasure those painful memories. I feel like part of my mission is to be a good mom and to help parents who are immigrants assimilate and acculturate in this great country."

Of Chi, she said: "He could have been one of those I would have helped. Instead of picking up a pen and a book, he picked up a gun."

'An escalating history of crime’

A jury of four women and eight men deliberated for 1  1/2 hours before assessing the death penalty. In addition to hearing from Riojas, jurors also heard that Chi had abused Erika Sierra and had assaulted inmates and jailers while awaiting trial.

"He has had an escalating history of crime," prosecutor Alan Levy said. "So someone has to stand here today and tell you that this man is dangerous today, tomorrow and forever, and that he should be executed."

That execution was scheduled for October 2007. But Chi was spared when the Supreme Court effectively halted the administration of capital punishment nationwide while it considered whether the lethal injection process violated the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

In April, the high court allowed executions to resume. Chi is the first Tarrant County inmate to face execution since then.

In 2003, Hugo Sierra was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the robbery-slaying.

This report includes material from the Star-Telegram archives.