A 25-year-old motorist who mowed down two men standing in front of a Moreno Valley restaurant, where they had watched and laughed at his drunken friend being manhandled by security guards, was convicted of two counts of second-degree murder.
A Riverside jury deliberated for just over a day before returning with unanimous verdicts on Thursday, Feb. 21, against Edgar Ivan Gomez Garcia of Mead Valley for the deaths of Junior Rafael Gonzalez, 29, and Pedro Cortes Rodriguez, 39, in 2019.
Riverside County Superior Court Judge Bernard Schwartz did not immediately set a sentencing date. He ordered Garcia to remain held without the possibility of bail at the Byrd Detention Center.
In the predawn hours of Oct. 18, 2019, Garcia and a friend went to the El Rodeo Restaurant at 24805 Alessandro Blvd., where the friend became inebriated, according to a trial brief filed by the District Attorney’s Office.
He was involved in an unspecified confrontation with a club patron that turned physical, culminating in two security guards hustling him out of the establishment into the parking lot, where the heavily intoxicated man continued to remain belligerent, court papers stated.
The guards deployed pepper spray, and one of them threw a gut punch, causing the friend to keel over in the parking lot, according to the brief. Garcia was walking to his friend’s Ford F-150 pickup truck when he saw what was happening, prompting him to challenge the men to a fight but was talked out of it by another employee of the venue, prosecutors said.
The friend was unable to walk unassisted, requiring Garcia to “drag him through the parking lot,” at which point the victims, among a group of friends, “laughed and began to take video of Hector being dragged,” the brief says.
Garcia, inflamed by the group’s behavior, placed his friend in the pickup’s passenger seat and got behind the wheel. A security surveillance camera mounted on a business across the street recorded the ensuing moments.
“The video captured the truck pull out of a parking stall and drive up the parking aisle toward a store next to El Rodeo,” according to the brief. “The truck turned right in front of the store, towards El Rodeo, and rapidly accelerated, screeching its tires.
“The truck came to an abrupt stop before reaching the front of El Rodeo,” the brief says. “After a couple of seconds, the driver accelerated into the crowd. The footage captured the truck striking the victims and dragging their bodies across the asphalt.”
Witnesses dialed 911 as Garcia sped away.
Junior Gonzalez was pronounced dead at the scene. Rodriguez was in a coma for nine days at Riverside University Medical Center before he was taken off of life support.
Based on the evidence, especially eyewitness identification of Garcia as the driver, a warrant was obtained, and on Oct. 22, 2019, he was arrested without incident in Moreno Valley. He has no documented prior felony convictions in Riverside County.
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