Man who killed Lincoln officer pleads to assault in another man's death

Vazquez, of Lincoln, already is serving a life sentence for fatally shooting Lincoln Police Investigator Mario Herrera while trying to escape arrest in connection to Edward Varejcka's killing March 8, 2020.

At the time, Vazquez was wanted for second-degree assault for his part in Varejcka's killing.

Investigators found his fingerprints on a TV thrown over his head. 

An autopsy determined Varejcka died of three stab wounds, any one of which alone was enough to kill him.

At a hearing last week, prosecutors made it clear they believed the No Name Demons gang, a burgeoning gang since swept up under a series of federal indictments, was responsible. 

Vazquez was near the top, Officer Joe Villamonte of LPD's gang unit testified last week at a hearing for the judge to decide whether that information could go before a jury at his trial then set to start in September. 

Until, this week, Vazquez avoided a trial by pleading no contest in a plea deal that took a murder charge off the table. 

Instead, he pleaded as initially charged and now could get up to 20 years in prison for it at his sentencing next month.

According to the Lancaster County Attorney's Office, at about 3:30 a.m. March 8, 2020, a 911 call sent officers to an apartment at 2222 Orchard St., where medics found 36-year-old Varejcka dead.

A witness told police four people had come into the apartment and said "run your pockets," street slang for a robbery. During the fight that followed, one said "kill him," and another (allegedly Vazquez) hit Varejcka over the head with a TV and got a knife from the kitchen and stabbed Varejcka.

Witnesses gave conflicting information in interviews but they came to believe a woman had called the group to the apartment to get her cellphone. 

Crime scene investigators found a kitchen knife from the apartment, with Varejcka's blood on the tip, which had been thrown outside the apartment building as the group left. But there was conflicting information about who had thrown it. 

Last year, Vazquez was sentenced to life in prison plus 129 years for Herrera's murder.

On Aug. 26, 2020, police had cornered Vazquez at his father's house at 33rd and Vine streets to arrest him on a warrant for felony assault in the Varejcka case when the then-17-year-old broke out a bedroom window and fired three shots from a stolen gun, fatally wounding Herrera and injuring a second officer from shrapnel.