Two men convicted in the 2014 shooting death of a Thermal resident in a Coachella alley were sentenced Friday to prison terms ranging from 10 to nearly 30 years.
Conrad Joseph Diaz, 35, was given a 29-year sentence, while co-defendant Thomas Gonzalez, 23, was ordered to serve a 10-year term for the Nov. 11, 2014, death of 18-year-old Jose Zaragoza in an alley between Harrison Street and Tripoli Way.
Diaz was given credit for 1,827 days of time served, while Gonzalez was credited 1,819 days. Neither are eligible for probation.
On Feb. 4, the pair withdrew their not guilty pleas and entered into plea deals, with Diaz admitting voluntary manslaughter and attempted murder counts and Gonzalez entering his plea to attempted murder and assault on a person causing great bodily injury, court records show.
Witnesses told a sheriff’s investigator that on the night of the killing, they were drinking beer and hanging out in the alley when they saw a white Jeep Grand Cherokee slowly coming toward them with its lights off.
The SUV stopped and someone in the vehicle said, “We got you,” according to witnesses, one of whom said someone in the Jeep pointed a gun at his head but he pushed it away.
The person in the SUV “began to fire several rounds at (the witness) and at his friends. Witnesses said they saw Zaragoza fire bullets at the Jeep Cherokee as he fell to the ground,” according to an arrest warrant declaration.
The people who saw the shooting took Zaragoza to John F. Kennedy Memorial Hospital in Indio, where he died less than a half-hour later.
Gonzalez was found in the SUV with a gunshot wound to the head, and there were bullet holes in one of the doors. In the months following the shooting, several court hearings were postponed while Gonzalez was recuperating from his injuries at a county jail hospital facility.