Cobb Mobile Home Park Fight Leads To Killing, Murder Conviction

MARIETTA, GA ­– An Atlanta man will serve life in prison after being convicted of murdering a man he thought had slighted him at a party. Francisco Javier Madera, 33, was sentenced Thursday by Cobb Superior Court Judge Robert Leonard. Last Friday, after a weeklong trial, a Cobb jury convicted Madera of malice murder, felony murder, and aggravated assault.

In the pre-dawn hours of Oct. 14, 2017, several people were gathered in and around a residence on Winnstead Drive, in the Waverly Mobile Home Park in Mableton, Georgia. Madera and Juan Carlos Zambrano Canales, 27, had met for the first time at the gathering. Witnesses said Madera began getting argumentative and Zambrano said something along the lines of “relax chiqui,” a Spanish word meaning “little one.”

A verbal altercation ensued that later turned physical. A witness asked Madera to leave the party and walked him to his car. Madera got into his vehicle and began to leave, but then stopped his vehicle in the middle of the road and returned to the party with a handgun. Madera proceeded to shoot Zambrano, who was unarmed and barefoot, three times, striking him in the abdomen and back.

Zambrano was rushed to Grady Hospital where he died from his injuries. A registered nurse who treated him there testified that the gunshot wound, which punctured a major vein, “literally emptied his heart.”

Madera was arrested two days later in Arkansas by U.S. Marshals and local police.

“The evidence showed that this defendant murdered Carlos Zambrano over nothing more than a girl and the word ‘chiqui,’” said ADA Stephanie Green, who prosecuted the case with ADA Erman Tanjuatco. “His actions were that of a cold-blooded killer.”