Video: Man walks into 7-Eleven, confesses to killing mother

FRESNO, Calif. -- A Fresno man on trial for the murder of his mother admitted to several people that he shot her. 62-year-old Sylvia Valencia was killed in her central Fresno home in August 2013.

Javier Sanchez made no bones about it. He killed his mother, then walked six blocks to the 7-11 in the Tower District.

Surveillance video shows him walking in, and after asking the clerk how his day was going, he told him it was about to get much worse.

"Man, I just shot my mom with a shotgun," you can hear him say in the surveillance video.

That quick confession was the first of several he made that day. Relieved he wasn't getting robbed, the clerk followed Sanchez's instructions to call 911.

"I have a gentleman, he would like to turn himself in because, I don't know, he just shot his mom," Usbaldo Ojeda said to the 911 dispatcher.

As other customers came and went, Sanchez paced back and forth through the store. When police arrived, he walked out and confessed again to the officers arresting him.

The 29-year-old said he'd recently lost a job with the city of Fresno, moved back in with his mother, and got depressed enough that he wanted to commit suicide. But by the time he grabbed the shotgun his mother used to protect herself from burglars, he'd changed his mind.

"Did he say what changed his mind?" prosecutor Ron Wells asked the first officer to encounter Sanchez.

"They started to argue and then he just said he shot her right after that during the argument," said Fresno police officer Robert Valdez.

"Did he say to you whether or not he decided to shoot her instead?" Wells asked.

"Yeah, he said he shot her instead," said Valdez.

Sanchez cried as he watched the video of his first confession and again as jurors passed around a picture of his dead mother. He pleaded insanity at the time of the killing.

The clerk who first encountered him thought he seemed to be in a strange state of mind, but he didn't seem drunk.

"In my opinion, he wasn't but I believe he might've been on some sort of drugs," Ojeda said.

The guilt phase of the trial could be done early next week. Sanchez is facing 15 years to life in prison if he's convicted and found sane. His family -- the same people mourning his mother -- are watching the trial and clinging to their faith, looking for guidance in the Bible they took from Sylvia Valencia's home.