Steele County killers sent off to prison

Two men will be spending considerable time behind bars for their involvement in the 2016 drug-related homicide in Steele County.
On Monday, Judge Joseph Bueltel sentenced Cyrus Trevino to more than 32 years in prison and Gerald Blevins to 12 years for killing Richard Jurgensen of Medford in a remote area of Steele County in June 2016. Trevino will receive credit for 499 days already served while Blevins gets credit for 500 days.
Both were scheduled to go on trial in September, but entered surprise guilty pleas to reduced charges just as the trial got underway for Trevino. 
Prosecutors said the two killed Jurgensen because they thought he had tipped off police that Trevino’s brother was in possession of methamphetamine. However, police denied that Jurgensen was an informant in the case.
Authorities called this the first meth-related homicide in the county’s history.
In court Monday, several of Jurgensen’s family members appeared before the court with impact statements detailing how the tragedy has devastated their lives. County attorney Daniel McIntosh said his assistant prosecutor read some of the victim statements because they were too traumatized to do so themselves.
“For the family, it is a real sense of relief that the court process is done,” McIntosh said. 
On June 25, 2016, Blevins and Trevino took Jurgensen to a rural area northeast of Owatonna where Trevino bound the victim with rope and shot him in the chest. Blevins said he heard Trevino say, “Snitches end up in ditches.”

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Trevino and Blevins will be sent to St. Cloud Prison for processing and it will be determined from there where they will serve out their sentences in the state prison system, McIntosh said.