Defendant's Heart Condition Delays Murder-for-Hire Trial Again

The trial of a Fountain Valley man and woman and a Santa Ana man accused of conspiring to kill the woman's husband was delayed again Monday because of one of the defendants' recurring heart problems.

Michael Calvin Shores II, 40, was transported to Western Medical Center in Anaheim on Thursday when he complained of chest pain shortly after prosecuting attorney Lynda Fernandez had finished her opening statements. Judge Richard Toohey told the jury that Shores was released from the hospital Saturday and that he fully expected Shores to be in court Monday but that doctors had ordered Shores back to the hospital for further testing.

Shores, Mary Katheryn Sharpski, 48, also of Fountain Valley, and Antonio Cinco Ortega, 25, of Santa Ana, are charged with plotting to kill Sharpski's husband, Frank, known to friends and family as Rick, in March 2009. As part of the alleged conspiracy with Shores and Sharpski, Ortega is accused of attacking Sharpski's husband with a machete in an alley outside of the victim’s home and leaving him to die the morning of March 3, 2009, fracturing the victim’s skull, severing a thumb and fingers, partly severing his nose and causing several other machete wounds.

Toohey postponed the proceedings until 9:30 a.m. Tuesday morning but told the jury that if Shores is still unable to appear, the trial will go on without him. Fernandez said that would constitute a mistrial for the charges against Shores, who would stand trial separately at a later time.

"I have a victim who has one hand and who's in a wheelchair—an electric wheelchair that had to be flown here specially so that he could be here," Fernandez said of Sharpski, who now lives in Wyoming with his brother and his two youngest children. "I don't want to have to try this case twice."

A hearing later today will determine how evidence will be presented should Shores' trial be severed from that of Sharpski and Ortega.