FARMINGTON — An Ogden woman was charged Monday in connection to a robbery and ensuing shootout police say happened in October 2023.
On Monday, 35-year-old Alyssa Castillo was charged with aggravated burglary, a first-degree felony, and accused of participating in the robbery of a Layton apartment complex.
A man sleeping on the couch in the apartment woke up around 3 a.m. to three people wearing masks and dark clothes breaking into the residence yelling the word “police,” a police booking affidavit says.
One of the alleged robbers began zip-tying the man, while the others made their way to a back bedroom, according to the affidavit.
The break-in and “commotion” had woken a sleeping couple, a booking report says. A man in the bedroom grabbed a pistol and “went to open his door,” to find he was “staring down the barrel of a gun from the hallway,” according to court documents.
He fired three shots at the robber, who returned fire in “the general direction of the bedroom,” before the intruders fled, leaving behind one of their guns, the affidavit states.
The man on the couch, who was being tied up, told police one of the robbers appeared to have been shot, the booking report says, so officers notified the local hospitals to be on the lookout for gunshot wounds.
Jessy Sonny Ellingsworth, a 49-year-old convicted, violent gang member who had just violated parole by leaving a treatment facility, showed up at the University of Utah emergency room with three bullet wounds, according to charging documents — two shots grazed him, while another lodged in his hip.
Ellingsworth said he had been a victim of a drive-by shooting in Salt Lake City, but the bullet was taken to the Utah State Forensic lab, where investigators found it matched the gun used by the robbery victim.
In November 2023, Ellingsworth was charged with aggravated kidnapping, aggravated robbery, aggravated burglary, all first-degree felonies; possession of a weapon by a restricted person, a second-degree felony; three counts of discharge of a firearm, a third-degree felony; and impersonating police, a class B misdemeanor.
A Syracuse man, Isak Jo Tatsu Archuleta, 42, was charged in April 2024 with aggravated burglary and aggravated robbery, first-degree felonies, after the police were tipped off that he had participated in the events months earlier, charges say.
DNA from Archuleta matched that found on the zip-ties, phone location data “was consistent with Ellingsworth’s known movements on the night of the shooting,” according to court documents, and Archuleta’s wife’s Chevy Tahoe was seen in Weber County by Utah Department of Transportation cameras that morning.
Archuleta was arrested at the house of his girlfriend, Alyssa Castillo, whose DNA was also found on items in the burglarized apartment, charges say. Police also say they connected phone calls between Castillo and associates of Archuleta and Ellingsworth the night of the shooting.
A jury trial for Castillo is scheduled for March 2025 on a separate case of aggravated kidnapping, where she is accused of helping abduct a man and take him to a hotel in Sunset.
Archuleta, who is being prosecuted on 11 counts of drug distribution, a first-degree felony, and accused of being the ringleader of a drug smuggling operation in Weber County Jail, does not yet have a trial date scheduled for the robbery charges.
Ellingsworth is scheduled to go to trial Feb. 5 for his charges.
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