A Kern County man was ordered Wednesday to remain jailed in lieu of $2 million bail while awaiting arraignment on a charge that he murdered a 61-year-old man who died hours after being found on the ground outside a Lancaster fast-food restaurant.
Manuel Berryman, 39, of California City, is charged in the Jan. 3 death of Frank Borsotti in the parking lot of Jack in the Box in the 43600 block of 10th Street West.
Deputies were sent around 12:45 p.m. that day to the parking lot of the eatery to investigate a report of an assault and found the victim on the ground “suffering from obvious trauma,” according to a sheriff’s department statement.
Borsotti, a Lancaster resident, died about five hours later at a hospital of blunt force head trauma, according to the coroner’s office.
Berryman was charged Feb. 13 with Borsotti’s killing and surrendered to the sheriff’s department about noon Tuesday.
Berryman — whose attorney unsuccessfully asked for his client to be released on his own recognizance — is due back in a Lancaster courtroom for arraignment March 15.