A state appellate court panel on Wednesday rejected an appeal from a man who slashed a clerk’s throat, stabbed him and tried to strangle him with a wire during a robbery at a cigar store in Manhattan Beach.
The three-justice panel from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal rejected the defense’s contention that there was not substantial evidence to support Tyler Lee Rodgers’ conviction on one of the counts — kidnapping to commit a robbery — stemming from the Aug. 16, 2012, attack on Naveed Mirza at The Cigar and Smoke Shop.
“The evidence did not merely show that Mirza was simply moved out of sight to keep him out of view or from interfering while defendant grabbed as much money as he could. He was moved a substantial distance from the public area of the store, through two sections of hallway to a secluded room, so that defendant could violently interrogate him regarding the location of money and about the surveillance cameras, and ultimately eliminate him as a witness to the robbery,” the appellate court panel found in its 12-page ruling.
Rodgers went into the shop with a box, pulled out a shotgun, forced the clerk to the back of the store, handcuffed him and demanded to know where money was kept.
Rodgers then collected currency from the cash register, demanded to know the location of any other money, cut Mirza’s throat from one side to the other, stabbed him three times in the neck and pressed back against the victim’s neck with a long metal wire.
Rodgers also stabbed the man in the check, multiple times in the neck and then in one hand before slashing another hand, the appellate court panel noted. Mirza survived his injuries, but had to undergo surgery and extensive physical therapy.
Some of the attack was caught on video surveillance cameras until Rodgers realized that he was being recorded and started tearing out the equipment, but the footage was recovered from a hard drive, according to Deputy District Attorney Ethan Milius. Rodgers — who was arrested eight days after the attack on the clerk — was convicted of attempted murder and robbery, in addition to the kidnapping charge, along with a residential burglary count stemming from a June 4, 2012, break-in at a home in Torrance.
During one court hearing, he reached behind himself and apparently ate his own feces. Two court-appointed doctors subsequently determined that he was mentally competent to stand trial.
Rodgers also rubbed feces on his face while in a courthouse lockup during his trial before Superior Court Judge Mark Arnold. He had waived his right to a jury trial.
Rodgers was sentenced in June 2013 to 40 years and eight months to life in state prison.
— City News Service