The lurid Lexington Valentine’s Day 2016 murder trial will have to wait until 2022.

Former San Jose restaurant owner Greg Leon, 49, faces murder and 3 other charges for killing a man he believed was his wife’s lover.

Leon is expected to be tried for killing Arturo Bravo Santos, 28, next June.

Santos, clad only in socks, was in the back seat of his truck with Leon’s wife after dark in the Park & Ride lot off US 378 and I-20,

11th Circuit Solicitor Rick Hubbard told the Lexington County Chronicle that due to a gag order he can only address the trial’s schedule.

Due to covid and defense counsel Dick Harpootlian’s legislative duties in the SC Senate, the court will likely set this case for next summer after the legislature adjourns, Hubbard said.

Leon has admitted shooting Santos but said it was justified as self-defense.

Leon said Santos reached for a gun in the front seat of his pickup truck and said, “I’m going to kill Greg.”

After the shooting Leon called 911 and said, “I shot my wife’s lover.”

The solicitor’s office has not accepted Leon’s version.

The defense contends:

• Leon’s wife was Santos’s victim. She bought him a $40,000 truck and agreed to have sex to protect her children who Santos threatened to harm.

• Santos was a member of a Mexican drug cartel, Las Zetas, and intimidated other women the same way.

Leon and his wife Rachel have reportedly reconciled.

A month before the shooting, Leon was fined $180,000 in federal court.

He was found guilty of charges he hired 60 undocumented workers as employees in his restaurants.

In state court, he pleaded guilty to paying former Lexington County Sheriff James Metts to let undocumented aliens who worked at Leon’s restaurants out of the Lexington County Detention Center in Lexington.

Metts plead guilty to conspiracy to harbor undocumented immigrants and spent a year and a day in federal prison in Butner, NC.

The Valentine’s Day shooting attracted national attention.