An Orange County man was convicted Tuesday of first-degree murder for shooting his estranged wife outside the Montebello restaurant where she worked.
The Los Angeles Superior Court jury deliberated about three hours before finding 31-year-old Arthur Andrew Andrade Jr. of Tustin guilty of the March 16, 2013, killing of his estranged wife, Esperanza.
She was shot six times in the head after being confronted while sitting in her car in a parking lot outside the eatery. The shooting was captured on a video surveillance camera outside the restaurant.
Andrade — who had been free on just over $2 million bail — was taken into custody immediately after the verdict and is facing 50 years to life in state prison. Sentencing is set for Jan. 29.
Deputy District Attorney Pallavi Dhawan told jurors that the victim was trying to escape from Andrade, “an obsessive, controlling and abusive man.”
In the six weeks before the shooting, she obtained a restraining order against her husband, disabled her social media accounts and hoped to “be left in peace,” the prosecutor said.
However, she couldn’t disappear entirely, and “there was no piece of paper that was going to protect her from this man, who was bent on destroying her because she didn’t want to be with him,” Dhawan said.
The prosecutor said the evidence showed that the murder was planned by Andrade, who testified in his defense during the trial.
“The tears that he shed in court were for himself … all to convince you that he’s guilty of a crime less than murder,” Dhawan told the jury. “He’s a murderer.”
Defense attorney Dale K. Galipo said the couple had a pattern of breaking up and getting back together, and that Andrade was severely depressed and suicidal over the break-up of his marriage.
Andrade’s wife sent him expletive-filled text messages calling him a “loser” and verbally abusing his family, but he was still “trying to make the marriage work,” his attorney said.
Andrade didn’t plan to kill his wife, Galipo said, arguing that his client wore “no disguise (when) going to a place of business where everyone knows (him), where (he knew) there were cameras.”
However, the two argued and when his wife told him she had never loved him, was sleeping with another man and had only used him to get documentation to stay in the U.S. legally, he was pushed beyond his limits, according to his attorney.
“Art lost it. He totally lost it,” Galipo said, after suggesting that Andrade brought the gun with him because he may have planned to kill himself.
“It doesn’t make the killing lawful, but it makes it manslaughter,” the defense attorney told the jury, describing the crime as a “heat of passion shooting.”
— City News Service