Two men convicted of murder in Pomona shooting
POMONA -- Two men have been convicted of murder in connection with the shooting death last year of 19-year-old Ramiro Chavez.
Vincent Lopez, 18, was found guilty by a jury Friday of first-degree murder, while Miguel Ayala, 21, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder last week as his trial was scheduled to begin, a prosecutor said.
Lopez faces a prison sentence of 50 years to life, while Ayala signed a plea agreement that carries a sentence of 35 years to life, said Deputy District Attorney Bjorn Dodd.
The men are scheduled to be sentenced later this month in Pomona Superior Court, Dodd said.
Prosecutors accused the two Pomona men of shooting Chavez numerous times on Aug. 14, 2010 in the 500 block of Weber Street in Pomona after Chavez identified himself as a member of a "party crew."
The driver in the incident, 24-year-old Jose Rojas Martinez, pleaded no contest to acting as an accessory to the murder and was sentenced in July to three years in prison, Dodd said.
According to testimony at an earlier hearing, the three defendants spent the evening drinking alcohol before Lopez, an alleged member of a La Puente-area gang, told the other men he wanted to "put in work" for his gang.
The group then drove around Pomona until they saw Chavez, a Pomona resident, on the sidewalk on Weber Street at about 12:45 a.m. Lopez allegedly asked Chavez if he belonged to a gang, and Chavez named his small party crew.
Lopez then shot Chavez several times, and Ayala did the same after being ordered by Lopez, according to testimony at the earlier hearing.
The three men were arrested that evening. Two guns in their van were linked to the shooting through ballistics testing, Dodd said.
Lopez's trial opened Wednesday, and after hearing two days of testimony a jury deliberated a short time Friday before reaching a verdict, Dodd said.
Surprising or not, much of the "news" presented by the Japanese media is litlte more than recycled US government propaganda. News about the US, and that about many world affairs is essentially what you'd see on CNN and in the New York Times. In fact, I've read many newspaper articles in which these media's websites are actually cited! From what I can see, Japanese foreign correspondents in the US do litlte investigative work of their own, or at least their media don't present any information that contradicts the US mainstream media.I just listened to a radio program in which the hosts called a Japanese correspondent in Washington and asked about the brouhaha over "The Path to 9/11." His description was just regurgitated from the US mainstream media. All the information on 9/11, Al-CAI-duh, and the war of terror is essentially the US government line. Quite some time ago there was a program on Japanese TV (hosted by an iconoclastic celebrity) which cast doubt on the official 9/11 story, but it was soon forgotten. I think foreigners in Japan paid more attention to it than Japanese viewers.