SAN DIEGO — The last of four defendants convicted in a violent South Bay crime spree that left one man shot dead and a woman paralyzed in a separate shooting was sentenced this week to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Over the course of a few days in April of 2018, prosecutors say that along with both shootings, the defendants took part in a stabbing, and the abduction and assault of another victim, among other crimes.
The fatal shooting victim, 59-year-old Mario Serhan, was mistakenly believed to be an undercover police officer surveilling the defendants and was shot in the head at a Chula Vista intersection.
Less than a day later, the defendants took a 19-year-old woman they believed had been "snitching" to police to Sunset Cliffs, where prosecutors say Michael Pedraza, 34, shot her and left her for dead. The woman was shot in the ear, the neck and the leg and continues to use a wheelchair to this day due to partial paralysis caused by the shooting.
Pedraza was convicted in two separate jury trials of attempted murder and kidnapping charges. He was sentenced Wednesday to life without parole, plus an additional 65 years to life, for the woman's shooting and other crimes.
Pedraza's co-defendants, Cesar Alvarado, 45; Britney Canal, 35; and Francisco Aranda, 35, have all been sentenced to prison.
Alvarado, who shot Serhan, pleaded guilty to murder and attempted murder and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Canal, who was Alvarado's girlfriend at the time, also pleaded guilty to murder and attempted murder and was sentenced to 30 years to life in state prison.
Aranda pleaded guilty to robbery and other charges and was sentenced to five years in state prison.
The crime spree began with Alvarado and Canal robbing the woman who was later shot at Sunset Cliffs. The pair accused the woman of stealing from her friend, so they robbed her of her purse and some drugs, the woman testified at Pedraza's first trial.
A few days later, Pedraza, whom she was previously acquainted with, reached out to her. He said he had been chased by police and had to ditch a backpack filled with drugs and a firearm near a hotel in Chula Vista.
Pedraza asked her to retrieve the backpack, but when she went to the hotel, no backpack could be found. Pedraza later arrived with Alvarado and Canal, and the trio began accusing her of stealing the backpack, she testified.
The defendants then took her into an SUV, where Canal repeatedly shocked her with a stun gun, the woman said. The trio demanded she get them money to make up for the missing backpack and over the course of the next day, the woman was driven across south San Diego County while the defendants sought different ways to extract money from her.
Deputy District Attorney David Grapilon told jurors that at around noon on April 11, the defendants spotted an SUV parked behind them in a Chula Vista residential neighborhood.
The prosecutor said the defendants began "freaking out" and concluded the SUV's driver must be a police officer.
But the SUV driver, Serhan, was not a police officer, but rather the owner of an electronics business who was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, Grapilon said.
The defendants tailed Serhan throughout Chula Vista, pulled alongside him on Industrial Boulevard, and Alvarado shot Serhan in the head, killing him, according to the prosecutor.
The defendants continued to take the woman to several other locations that day, before eventually accusing her of stealing from them and "snitching" to police on a prior occasion.
Grapilon said that just after 2 a.m. April 12, the defendants took the woman to Sunset Cliffs and forced her at gunpoint to walk down a staircase leading down to the ocean.
As she begged for her life, Grapilon said Pedraza told her, "Shut the (expletive) up. Die with some dignity," then shot her.
Following the shooting, Pedraza and his co-defendants kidnapped a man from a San Ysidro motel, beat him, accused him of stealing Pedraza's wallet and threatened to take him to Tijuana and kill him, the prosecutor said.
A few hours after that, prosecutors say the defendants got into an altercation with a man at El Toyon Park in National City, which resulted in Pedraza stabbing the man in the leg.
By this point, the defendants' vehicle had been positively identified and police spotted it at a San Ysidro motel. After the defendants got into the car and drove off, a police pursuit ensued, stretching from San Ysidro to Alvarado's home in National City, ultimately resulting in the defendants' arrests.
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