A man who pleaded guilty in connection with the killing of a part-time firefighter from West Covina was sentenced Friday to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Elijah Thomas Rouse, now 23, of La Verne, pleaded guilty Jan. 9 to first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit arson. He also admitted a special-circumstance allegation of murder during the commission of a robbery, along with an allegation that he personally used a deadly weapon, according to Deputy District Attorney Phil Stirling.
Rouse and co-defendant Shaun Cardarelli, now 41, of San Gabriel, were charged in August 2019 for the beating and stabbing death of John Aguila, 28, whose burned body was discovered in Upland.
Cardarelli is awaiting trial Feb. 26 in a Pomona courtroom on murder and other charges.
A criminal complaint filed in 2019 alleged that Aguila was killed in an apartment and his body — which had been wrapped in a blanket and cellophane and bound with duct tape — was moved to his 2017 Honda Civic, driven to San Bernardino County and dumped off the road in Upland, where gasoline was poured on his upper body and ignited.
West Covina Police Department officers found gloves and bloody clothes in the trunk of the firefighter’s car, which was found Aug. 22, 2019, in San Dimas, where it had been impounded.
West Covina Police Department Cpl. Rudy Lopez said then that investigators “located video surveillance that showed a male leaving from the car and walking away from it. It was determined that this subject was not the missing person.”
Aguila had been reported missing the same day when he did not show up for work as a part-time Bureau of Land Management firefighter or return home — behavior his family described as uncharacteristic.
Rouse and Cardarelli were arrested less than a week later by West Covina police, and have remained behind bars since then, jail records show.