Murderer gets parole hearing

UTAH STATE PRISON — Charles Pete Ulibarri was 16 years old when he stood over David Young — already wounded after being shot three times — and fired a rifle bullet into the 43-year-old's lower abdomen, nicking his heart.

"I just freaked out. I was young, amped up," Ulibarri said Tuesday during his second parole hearing since being sentenced to prison in 1991 for capital murder.

"He was already down. I really don't know why I even shot him," the now-35-year-old Ulibarri said.

Ulibarri, along with Young's stepson, Joseph Russell Hill, had gone to the victim's Ogden home on April 22, 1991, to retrieve Hill's things. But then they found Young's gun collection, Ulibarri said, and began firing some of the weapons inside the house and stealing things.

"It kinda turned into a robbery," Ulibarri told Utah Board of Pardons and Parole member Clark Harms.

He said Hill told him to hide when Young walked in unexpectedly. There was some shouting, Ulibarri said, and then Hill shot Young three times. Young fell, and Ulibarri stepped from his hiding place, shooting the man once. Hill, then 18, fired a final shot into the back of Young's head before the teens fled.

Young's body was found four days later, after co-workers became concerned when he missed his shift without calling in.

"I didn't want to be caught, but I was glad I was," said Ulibarri, who met Hill when they lived in the same foster home.

"I knew we weren't going to get away with it," he added.

Ulibarri was certified to stand trial as an adult in the slaying. He pleaded guilty in September 1991 to capital murder — one of the youngest people in Utah to do so at the time — and was sentenced to serve life in prison with the possibility of parole. Hill pleaded guilty to capital murder and other charges three months later and received an identical sentence. His next parole hearing is scheduled for 2011.

Under questioning from Harms, Ulibarri said his mother was a drug addict. His childhood and teen years were spent sleeping on the couches of friends and family members, he said, and his longest stint in one place before coming to prison was when he lived for a year with his aunt.

But Ulibarri asked for no sympathy for his difficult upbringing.

"I don't blame my childhood," he said. "Our choices are our own, and we have to own them."

Ulibarri said he spent his first eight years in prison "with a chip on my shoulder," fighting everyone and everything. He eventually realized the things he was missing in his life, though, and said he began working to better himself. He earned his GED, went on to complete a college degree and has held various prison jobs to learn trade skills.