A 27-year-old man who helped feed information to several cohorts who allegedly killed four people pleaded guilty Friday to robbery and was sentenced to five years in prison.
Alejandro Guerrero Ruiz of Orange accepted a plea bargain that dismissed four counts of special circumstances murder, according to court records.
Ruiz, who has been in custody since April 2016, will be released as he has more than enough credit for time served, said Senior Deputy District Attorney Mena Guirguis.
Ruiz received the plea deal because murder law has been changed to exclude less-involved participants in a killing, Guirguis said.
Ruiz was the least involved of the defendants and his role was telling the others where they could find drugs and money to steal, which led to the grisly killings, Guirguis said.
Ruiz, who was the first arrested in the case, was not at the scene of the murders, Guirguis said.
Angel De Jesus Barreras, 28, of Ontario, and Raul Gastellum Flores, 30, are charged with four counts of murder and face special circumstance allegations of multiple murders and murder during a robbery, according to court records. They are awaiting trial.
Co-defendants Alexis Corral, 27, Juan Castro, 30, and Rosario Roman-Lopez, 28, are fugitives, according to court records.
They are accused of killing 19-year-old Antonio Medina of Glendale, Arizona, 20-year-old Fernando Meza of Phoenix and 26-year-old Edgar Berrelleza-Soto of Orange, who were in an SUV found ablaze and rolled onto a sidewalk in front of a home in the 500 block of East Oakmont Avenue, near Shaffer Street, in Orange the afternoon of Nov. 9, 2015. All three had been shot, according to prosecutors.
The fourth victim was 35-year-old Joel Mauricio Berrelleza of Orange, the brother of Berrelleza-Soto. His body was found Nov. 15, 2015, in the backseat of a car in Fontana. The date of all four murders was listed as Nov. 9, 2015, according to court records.