An ex-con was sentenced Thursday to life in prison without the possibility of parole for fatally shooting a veteran UPS employee who was among three people who tried to stop him after he was seen rummaging around a parked car in Covina four days before Christmas in 2021.
Trevor Howard Thompson, 37, was also sentenced by Judge Victor Martinez to a consecutive indeterminate term of 25-years-to-life, plus a consecutive determinate term of 24 years in state prison, according to the L.A. County District Attorney’s Office.
Thompson was found guilty in December of first-degree murder for the Dec. 21, 2021, killing of 38-year-old Joey Manuel Casias, along with two counts each of assault with a semiautomatic firearm and possession of a firearm by a felon, according to Deputy District Attorney Phil Stirling.
The jury in Pomona Superior Court also found true the special-circumstance allegation of murder to avoid arrest, along with gun allegations, Stirling said.
Deputy District Attorney Michelle Weiske told the Pomona jury in opening statements of Thompson’s trial last December that ballistics evidence linked Thompson to the killing, while defense attorney Anthony Cavalluzzi countered that his client opened fire only after being punched and kneed.
Weiske told jurors that the bulk of the charges against the defendant stemmed from his actions in December 2021 after he was seen inside a white BMW that had inadvertently been left unlocked.
Thompson was first confronted by the vehicle’s owner, who was informed that someone was inside the vehicle that he had bought for his daughter and had parked in front of a neighbor’s residence to keep it a surprise, according to the prosecutor.
The deputy district attorney said that Thompson told the vehicle’s owner that his “homegirl” told him to come pick up the vehicle and that it must have been the wrong car, and that three other people, including Casias who was returning home with his family from a mall, subsequently went into a nearby housing complex to try to look for him.
One of the two 17-year-old boys called 911 and went to the front of the complex to meet a responding police officer, while the other two people followed Thompson after finding him inside the complex, the prosecutor told jurors.
Weiske said the two encountered the defendant as they went around a corner and Thompson turned toward them in a boxing stance, taking a swing at the 17-year-old boy before Casias came to the boy’s aid and kneed the defendant.
Thompson responded by pulling out a gun and firing a round, with the 17-year-old boy hearing a series of about three more shots as he ran from the scene and toward police with his hands up in the air, according to the prosecutor.
Casias — who was found on the ground — had been shot once in the back and once in the back of his right hand, Weiske said.
Thompson was arrested the next day after a standoff with police, according to the prosecutor, who said a firearms examiner subsequently concluded that the cartridge cases collected from the scene of the shooting had been “fired from that gun that the defendant had in his possession.”
Thompson is also charged with an Aug. 23, 2021, attack on a man who was confronted at gunpoint while sitting with his girlfriend inside his vehicle in his own assigned parking spot at an apartment complex where Thompson’s mother also lived, the deputy district attorney told jurors.
Thompson pounded on the car window to ask the man what he was doing there, then pulled out a gun and said, “Don’t make me put a bullet in your head,” before eventually walking away, according to Weiske.
Defense attorney Anthony Cavalluzzi noted that there is some evidence that his client suffers from mental health issues and delusions and said he was “not going to spend a lot of time talking about the August incident.”
He said the case was really about three people who “decide to take the law into their own hands and that’s not justice.”
“… This wasn’t helping. This was hunting,” Cavalluzzi said. “All he’s ever doing is walking away.”
He questioned the account by one of the teens, who told authorities that Thompson was the first to respond with force during the December 2021 confrontation.
The defense attorney described a “literal beating of my client.”
He said Thompson did not make the choice to hurt anyone until he was getting punched and kneed.
“This is what is happening to my client when he made a decision to pull out his gun,” Thompson’s attorney told jurors.
The defense lawyer said then that he would ask the jury to acquit Thompson of first-degree murder and the special circumstance allegation, along with the lesser charge of second-degree murder charge.
He also told jurors that “it’s not manslaughter” if jurors believe it is “righteous self-defense,” and said that is what he will argue when the trial nears an end.
Casias’ widow, Veronica, was called as the prosecution’s first witness and gave emotional testimony, in which she described returning home with her husband and their two children from Christmas shopping at the Brea mall and coming upon one of the 17-year-old boys, who informed him that he had seen a man inside the BMW.
“Joey told me to take the kids out of the car and wait inside the house,” she said.
When asked by Stirling if it was the “last time you saw him,” she responded, “Yes,” with her voice shaking.
Shortly after the shooting, then-District Attorney George Gascón called Casias’ killing “an especially heartbreaking incident since Mr. Casias was simply acting as a good Samaritan.”
Thompson has remained behind bars since his arrest.