After 10 hours of deliberations over two days, a jury on Friday convicted a man of burglarizing and robbing a La Jolla man at gunpoint as well as first-degree murder in another incident.
\nJose Nunez Torres, 23, was also found guilty of 13 other charges including two counts of evading officers with reckless driving, two auto thefts, and committing some offenses while free on bond in an earlier court case.
\nThe seven-man, five-woman jury also found true special circumstances allegations that the murder of Leticia Arroyo was committed during a robbery, burglary, and while lying in wait.
\nDeputy District Attorney James Koerber said Torres faces a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole plus 25 years consecutively for personally using a gun in a homicide.
\nTorres could also face additional years in prison for robbing the La Jolla man and other crimes.
\nEl Cajon Superior Court Judge Evan Kirvin set sentencing for Nov. 9. Torres remains in jail without bail.
\nThe trial was in El Cajon because Arroyo, 34, was killed in her Santee townhome on Oct. 4, 2016. Four baggies of methamphetamine were taken from her home, according to the getaway driver who testified against Torres.
\nTorres\u2019 attorney, Michael Hawkins, did not mention the La Jolla robbery or some of the other crimes in his closing argument on Sept. 12. He mostly argued against convicting him of murder and blamed the getaway driver as the real killer. Robert Hill was robbed on Oct. 12, 2016, at 7:50 a.m. in his La Jolla home which was a week after Arroyo was shot to death in her home.
\nGustavo Ceron, 26, pleaded guilty to committing a home invasion robbery at Hill\u2019s residence, and he testified Sept. 5 in Torres\u2019 trial. Ceron will also be sentenced Nov. 9 and he faces up to seven years in prison.
\nCeron worked at the Hilton Hotel in La Jolla at the time and testified he met Torres for the first time the night before. He said he smoked meth while Torres drove around La Jolla, looking for residences to burglarize.
\nCeron told the jury that Torres picked out Hill\u2019s residence to burglarize because he noticed the windows were open. He said Torres cut the window screen in the kitchen and got inside.
\nCeron testified Torres let him in the front door and that Torres pointed a gun at Hill\u2019s head when he heard voices in his home. He said he acted as a translator for Torres in talking with Hill, whom Ceron said was “really scared.”
\nCeron was questioned about his plea agreement with prosecutors and acknowledged that a sentence on probation “could happen.”
\nTorres\u2019 attorney claimed that his client was apparently present when Arroyo was shot, as her blood was later found on his pants. Hawkins told jurors the getaway driver shot her and not Torres.
\nThe getaway driver pleaded guilty to accessory after the fact, and Hawkins said that was the offense Torres should have been charged with.
\nCeron and the getaway driver also remain in jail awaiting sentencing.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After 10 hours of deliberations over two days, a jury on Friday convicted a man of burglarizing and robbing a La Jolla man at gunpoint as well as first-degree murder in another incident. Jose Nunez Torres, 23, was also found guilty of 13 other charges including two counts of evading officers with reckless driving, two […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":281253,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11561","_seopress_titles_title":"Jury convicts Torres of La Jolla robbery, murder","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[12360,11551,11561],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-281256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-duplicate","category-news","category-peninsula-beacon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281256\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}