SALEM — A Malden man was found guilty Tuesday in the 2019 shooting death of a 23-year-old Salem man outside a Malden housing project.
Jeury Batista, a Salem High School graduate who was attending North Shore Community College, was shot to death on the evening of March 2, 2019.
Yahia Mastouri, 21, was convicted of second-degree murder, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, firearms charges and conspiracy to violate the drug laws. A co-defendant, Josue L. Espada, 22, also of Malden, was found guilty of being an accessory after the fact and conspiracy to violate the drug laws.
Both men are due to be sentenced on Jan. 6 in Middlesex Superior Court in Woburn.
Prosecutors argued that Batista had gone to Malden with his girlfriend at the time, a Salisbury woman named Danielle Lauritzen, to purchase marijuana from some high school acquaintances of Lauritzen, but were instead set up to be robbed behind the housing project near Malden Catholic High School.
Lawyers for Mastouri and Espada tried to convince jurors that it was Batista who planned to rob their clients — an argument jurors rejected at the conclusion of the 20-day trial.
Mastouri, who fled to California after the shooting, faces a life sentence for the second-degree murder conviction but will be eligible for parole after 15 years.