Two men who used a Snapchat app to lure a teenager to a Point Loma shopping center where he was murdered have both received prison terms without the possibility of parole.
The parents of Eduardo Salguero, 18, of Point Loma, listened to the sentence on June 2 and his father declined to speak, saying in court it was “too hard” emotionally to overcome.
The parents had submitted letters to San Diego Superior Court Judge Kimberlee Lagotta, she noted.
The gunman, Angel Garcia, 20, was sentenced on May 23 and Armando Silvestre Alvarado, 21, both of San Diego, received the same sentence on June 2.
Both men also received 25 years consecutively to the life without parole sentence for using a gun in a homicide in the Nov. 25, 2020 crime that occurred behind the Vons supermarket at 6 p.m. at 3645 Midway Drive.
They were attempting to sell a ghost gun, which had no serial numbers, but instead, they used it as a murder weapon to kill Salguero. Garcia shot Salguero in the back, causing him to slump over the steering wheel and the car propelled forward into a wall.
Garcia hit his head into the windshield, leaving his DNA in blood and hair behind, said Deputy District Attorney Miriam Hemming. Alvarado took Salguero’s wallet, containing $50, but accidentally left his cell phone behind in the car. His phone had a message from Garcia on it.
Garcia was additionally sentenced to eight more years because the jury convicted him of an unrelated robbery in which he held up a man in Mission Beach on Nov. 6, 2020. The man lost his cell phone, wallet, and cash.
Alvarado’s attorney, Shervin Samimi, argued on June 2 that he should not get life without parole, saying it was Garcia who was the gunman and who caused the death.
“He was only 19 years old at the time of the offense,” said Samimi. “He is not the worst of the worst.”
Samimi asked the judge to dismiss the special circumstances of murder during a robbery and also asked for a new trial, both of which were denied.
Samimi said he made a self-defense argument to the jury, and he also lamented the judge precluded the defense from asking for a lesser verdict such as voluntary manslaughter.
“That was an argument without evidence,” responded the judge.
Hemming responded by saying Alvarado “is in the category of the worst of the worst” because he “used a gun as bait and that victim was a high school student.”
“He is a poster boy for being a major participant,” said the prosecutor.
Lagotta ruled that Alvarado planned the robbery with Garcia and he took the victim’s wallet as he lay dying. “This type of robbery elevates (the crime) to the worst of the worst,” said the judge.
A jury convicted both men on Feb. 27 of first-degree murder and the special circumstance of murder during a robbery after 12 hours of deliberations over three days. They were also convicted of trying to murder a 17-year-old boy named Ruben who came along with Salguero.
Ruben pulled out a BB gun, which looked like a real gun and defense attorneys claimed it caused both men to fire shots. The defense claimed it was not a robbery and the victim had planned to rob them.
