A Los Angeles knife-wielding kidnapping robber could be sentenced to life in prison for his attack of a 79-year-old woman inside her South Pasadena home and the burglary of another senior in Pasadena less than two months earlier.
A jury deliberated about a day before finding Alonzo Bernard Johnson, 53, guilty of one felony count each of kidnapping to commit robbery, first- degree residential robbery and first-degree burglary with a person present.
Jurors on Wednesday also found true allegations that Johnson personally used a knife and inflicted great bodily injury on an elderly victim. She suffered a brain bleed and ruptured ear drum in the Aug. 6, 2012, attack, according to the District Attorney’s Office.
Johnson accosted the woman, who was 79 at the time, in her kitchen, broke her nose, demanded money from her, pulled her to a bedroom while armed with a knife and tried to tie her up with an electrical cord after forcing her to lay face-down on her bed, according to Deputy District Attorney Prescilliano Duran.
The prosecutor said Johnson repeatedly demanded that the woman give him jewelry and continuously punched her in the head and face.
He grabbed the woman’s jewelry and fled from the home after her two grandchildren — who were 8 and 12 — entered the residence and she told them to get help, Duran said.
Johnson was arrested the same day by South Pasadena police.
Authorities subsequently linked him through DNA and fingerprints to a June 22, 2012, home burglary in Pasadena, in which another 79-year-old woman walked into her bedroom and found him stealing jewelry before he fled the home, according to Duran.
— Wire reports