A gang member who pleaded guilty to the February 2008 shooting death of a man holding a toddler in the Cypress Park area of Los Angeles, along with a cellmate’s killing in county jail about three years later, was sentenced Friday to a pair of life prison terms without the possibility of parole.
Sparing himself from a potential death sentence if he had gone to trial, Jose Angel Gomez pleaded guilty Aug. 25 to the Feb. 21, 2008, killing of Marco Salas, who was carrying his 2-year-old step-granddaughter near Aragon Avenue Elementary School, along with the strangulation of Jonathan Najera in Men’s Central Jail between Feb. 28, 2011, and March 1, 2011.
Gomez, now 27, also admitted the special circumstance allegation that the killings were carried out while Gomez was an active participant in a criminal street gang and that the murders were carried out to further the activities of a criminal street gang.
He had been awaiting trial in connection with Salas’ killing, along with the death of Daniel Leon, a gang member who was fatally shot by police during a shootout soon after Salas’ shooting. The murder charge involving Leon’s death was dismissed as a result of his plea.
Gomez had been awaiting trial separately in connection with the jail killing, in which several other inmates have also been charged.
“I hope that he just rots in jail and rots in hell as well,” Najera’s father, Alfredo, said just before Gomez was sentenced for his son’s killing. “Because of him and his way of living, my son is gone.”
In a letter read in court by Deputy District Attorney Phillip Stirling, Najera’s mother, Antonia, said she wanted to speak positively to honor her son, whom she called a “charming and funny person.”
“I feel so blessed that he was with me for 20 years of my life,” she said, saying that her son still lives on in her and that he is her “inspiration.”
Los Angeles Superior Court Judges Ronald S. Coen and Kathleen Kennedy — who each handled one of the murder cases against Gomez — ordered the life prison terms to be conserved consecutively to one another, with Kennedy saying that she believed “he should never be released.”
One of Gomez’s attorneys, Christopher Chaney, called it a “good settlement” and the “right disposition.”
Co-defendant Rafael Carrillo was convicted in December 2013 of first- degree murder for Salas’ killing, but was acquitted of murder involving Leon’s death. In January, a state appellate court panel rejected Carrillo’s contention that there were errors in his trial and the California Supreme Court refused in April to review the case against him.
—City News Service