A 22-year-old ex-con was sentenced Friday to life in prison without the possibility of parole for gunning down a man in Cathedral City during a botched robbery involving $50 worth of marijuana.
Jacob Paul Winters was convicted last month, following a two-day trial, of murder and being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm. Jurors also found true a special circumstance allegation of committing murder in commission of a robbery.
Winters was convicted in the killing of Hector Perez, 21, who was found in his car at 12:53 a.m. March 21 near the area of Baristo Road and Date Palm Drive.
Perez, who had been shot in the upper body, was conscious when rescuers arrived, but died of his wounds at Desert Regional Medical Center about an hour later.
Deputy District Attorney Manny Bustamante said Perez was called to the parking lot of a Sonic Drive-In restaurant in Cathedral City to sell marijuana to a woman. However, when he and a friend reached the scene, they saw two men — not the woman who called Perez, the prosecutor said.
Bustamante told jurors that Winters leveled a rifle at Perez’s friend while an accomplice, who is unidentified and still at large, reached through the driver’s side window to take Perez’s keys out of the ignition. Perez then tried to move the rifle barrel away from his friend’s face, prompting Winters to shoot him, the prosecutor said.
“It was a simple plan, with a simple motive, that suddenly went horribly wrong,” Bustamante said.
Perez sped off from the parking lot to the area of Baristo Road and Date Palm Drive, where police found him after his friend called 911.
Winters was arrested three days after the shooting at his stepfather’s home on Avenida Quintana. He told police that he was sleeping at his mother’s home in Desert Hot Springs on the night of the shooting.
Defense attorney Arnold Lieman argued that Winters was never at the scene of the crime, and that the robbery motive made no sense, as Winters would not need to rob Perez to get marijuana. Winters was known to sell the drug and testified to that during the trial, Lieman said.
According to court records, Winters has a prior felony conviction for selling marijuana and was given three years’ probation in January.
Bustamante countered that they “weren’t looking to buy (marijuana.) They were looking to take what wasn’t theirs.”
— City News Service