What the Judge Ate for Breakfast

Thursday’s update: Gloria Ibarra was arraigned this morning and pleaded not guilty. Judge Ben Burgess tentatively set her trial for March 9.

Gloria Ibarra told police she stabbed Kevin Hadley in an argument over $35.

This morning, after hearing Wichita homicide detective Tim Relph recount his conversation with Ibarra, Sedgwick County District Judge Joseph Bribiesca granted a prosecutor’s request to change the charges against her from second-degree murder to first-degree premeditated murder.

Ibarra, 45, told Relph she went to Hadley’s house last Oct. 24 in the 1600 block of North Hydraulic to spend the night. She said he was supposed to have $35 to buy drugs, but he only had $5.

The couple did a shot of cocaine, Ibarra told Relph, then began to argue over the money.

Ibarra told Relph:

Hadley pulled the knife and stabbed her in the leg. But she grabbed the knife after he dropped it. She plunged it into his chest.

“You’re going to kill me,” Hadley yelled.

Ibarra chased Hadley into the kitchen, where he threw something at her. Hadley then ran into the bedroom and barricaded it with a heater.

When police arrived at about 3 a.m. Oct. 25, they found Hadley at a neighbor’s house, clutching his chest with three knife wounds. The 49-year-old died of his wounds later.

Ibarra called 911 about 30 minutes later from her home across town in the 1900 block of West Dora.

Relph said when he reading his rights to Ibarra, she interrupted him.

“Is he OK?” she asked.

“No,” Relph said.

“Is he dead?” she asked.

When Relph told her Hadley was, she fell out of her chair, crying.

Officer Bradley Harris said he followed a blood trail from the neighbor’s house, where he found Hadley, to a window outside the bedroom. When he entered Hadley’s home, he found the bedroom door partially opened and blocked by a heater. There were drops of blood in other parts of the apartment but pools and a blood-soaked T-shirt in the bedroom.

Deputy District Attorney Kevin O’Connor said that the evidence added up to Hadley being stabbed in the bedroom, not the living room. That means Ibarra would have had to push through the barrier made by the heater and into the bedroom to stab Hadley.

“That shows premeditation,” O’Connor said.

O’Connor said Hadley broke the window in the bedroom to get to the neighbor’s house, trying to escape his assailant.

“There’s no evidence that this took place in the bedroom, or that it was even an intentional killing,” Ibarra’s public defender, Mark Rudy, argued.

Because it was a preliminary hearing, Bribiesca said he had to view the evidence in a light most favorable to the state in finding probable cause the crime was committed.

Bribiesca also acknowledged while it appeared Ibarra might have an argument for self-defense, that would be a decision left up to a jury.

Because O’Connor needed time to prepare the new charges, Ibarra is set to be arraigned as early as today.