The convicted killer of a Point Loma High School (PLHS) football player in 2008 is expected to be sentenced Friday to 50 years to life in prison. It\u2019s no plea bargain for Frederick Garcia Cruz, 22, who made a surprise guilty plea last month to two counts of first-degree murder in the shooting deaths of Michael Taylor, 15, and Monique Palmer, 17, who were killed as they were walking home from a party in Valencia Park. Families of the victims are expected to speak Friday before San Diego Superior Court Judge David Danielsen sentences Cruz, who will get 25 years to life consecutively for each murder. The victims were killed Dec. 6, 2008 around 12:50 a.m. Deputy District Attorney Mike Still said Cruz “must do a full 50 years sentence” before he could become eligible for parole \u2014 when Cruz turns 72. “The Pointer football family will be glad to see Michael Taylor\u2019s murderer sentenced and put away \u2026 ,” said PLHS head football coach Mike Hastings. “Michael\u2019s memory lives on in all of our players\u2019 and coaches\u2019 minds and hearts.” Edmond Tucker, a junior at PLHS and a former teammate of Michael Taylor, said, “It\u2019s good they caught the person. He pleaded guilty because he knew what he did was wrong.” “I just want to let him know that he has what\u2019s coming to him,” Tucker continued. “He\u2019s in jail now, and he probably regrets what he did. But he can\u2019t take it back, so he\u2019s got to face the consequences.” Tucker, who said he has known Taylor since he was six years old, added he has visited the victim\u2019s mother. “His mom, for the loss that she\u2019s had, she\u2019s real strong,” Tucker said. “I always touch base and show my face around there just to show them that part of Michael is still here with the football team.” Tucker said news of Michael\u2019s murder shocked him and “I didn\u2019t really believe it until I didn\u2019t see Michael around at school. I had to personally go to his mom to talk about it. It was a hard loss for me because he was my age, and all that kept running through my head was, \u2018It could have been me.\u2019” The only charges that were dismissed against Cruz were gang allegations and a special-circumstance allegation of multiple murders which would have sent Cruz to prison for life without the possibility of parole.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The convicted killer of a Point Loma High School (PLHS) football player in 2008 is expected to be sentenced Friday to 50 years to life in prison. It\u2019s no plea bargain for Frederick Garcia Cruz, 22, who made a surprise guilty plea last month to two counts of first-degree murder in the shooting deaths of […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11561","_seopress_titles_title":"Man who murdered PLHS football player to learn his sentencing fate","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11551,11593,11561],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-295910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-no-images","category-peninsula-beacon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295910","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=295910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295910\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}