LAWRENCE, Mass. — A 41-year-old Lawrence woman was hit by a bullet fired from a rifle while she slept in her bed on July 4, authorities said. 

Three men who lived in the apartment above were ordered held on high bail Monday, but not on charges related to the woman’s death. 

Jose Lara, 35, Wilton Lara-Calmona, 38, and Christopher Paganmoux, 22, who all live on the second floor at 7 Exchange St. are charged with trafficking heroin and cocaine with a street value of roughly $75,000.

They lived above Mirta Rivera, 41, who was shot while asleep in her bed. The three men are facing criminal charges for the narcotics found in the apartment and outside, off a back porch, as police investigated Rivera’s murder, according to court papers.

A search of the upstairs apartment 

At 4:26 a.m. Saturday, police were called to 7 Exchange St. and met Jorge Villata, 41, Rivera’s boyfriend, who was begging for help for his girlfriend, who wasn’t breathing. After administering first aid and calling an ambulance, responding officers found a hole in the ceiling above Rivera’s bed with plaster hanging down, Bradley wrote.

“The floor was buckled from the blast and velocity of a gun,” Lawrence Detective David Augusta wrote in an incident report.

Police went to the second-floor apartment and when no one answered, they breached the door and went inside.

The smell of burned fresh gunpowder was evident in the apartment and the three men, Lara, Lara-Calmona and Paganmoux, were found in bedrooms inside, officers wrote in reports.

Police, during a search of the apartment and the perimeter of the building, found a Sears and Roebuck .270 bolt action rifle and a backpack filled with what appeared to be illegal narcotics.

“These items appeared to have been thrown over the fence, possibly from the second floor porch or from the ground,” Augusta wrote in his report. “The rifle was consistent with the high-powered velocity needed to penetrate and buckle the hardwood tongue and groove second floor, the ceiling, the victim, the mattress, the first floor and bounce back upright into the box spring of the same mattress.”

Police found more narcotics in Paganmoux’s bedroom, Augusta wrote.

In court Monday, Prosecutor Karen Hopwood asked Judge Lynn Rooney to set bail at $500,000 each for Lara and Lara-Calmona and $250,000 for Paganmoux.

If convicted of the narcotics charges, all three men face minimum mandatory sentence of 12 years in state prison. Lara has a pending deportation warrant and Lara-Calmona has altered his fingerprints, Hopwood said.

A young woman identified as Rivera’s daughter sobbed throughout Monday’s arraignment of the three men in Lawrence District Court. She and other tearful relatives left the courthouse, declining comment.

All three men are due back in Lawrence District Court on Aug. 3 for a probable cause hearing. 

Jill Harmacinski of The Eagle-Tribune reported this story.