15 November 2024 :
November 12, 2024 - California. Alexis Daniel Rosas formally sentenced to death
By Riverside County Superior Court Judge Jennifer Gerard
A man who killed an 18-year-old woman to keep her silent because she'd seen him shoot someone was sentenced to death on November 12.
Makayla Jean Massey, also known as Anita Garcia, was killed in 2019.
A jury had earlier recommended that Rosas, now 29, be sentenced to death, and a judge formally imposed that sentence Tuesday.
Massey's boyfriend, identified only as ``Abram,'' had been at odds for some time with Rosas, a documented member of an Indio street gang who bore the moniker “Trigger,” according to a trial brief filed by the District Attorney's Office.
On June 24, 2019, Rosas went to the abandoned house in the 45-400 block of Oasis Street in Indio where Abram and Massey were residing and shot Abram in the chest — an act which Massey witnessed and detailed to Indio police immediately afterward, prosecutors said.
Abram was hospitalized but ultimately recovered from the wound.
After the shooting, Massey checked into a Motel 6 in Indio for her own safety. But Rosas, then 23, learned of her whereabouts and that she had made contact with police, prompting him to plan her murder.
He enlisted the help of his girlfriend, Maury Duarte. In the pre-dawn hours of June 25, 2019, Rosas went to Massey's motel room and persuaded her to come out, then physically restrained her inside a car, which Duarte drove to a vacated ranch in the 82-600 block of Avenue 53 in Thermal, according to court papers.
Once at the location, Rosas shoved the victim out of the car and ordered her to start walking toward a gate.
“The defendant kicked her in the stomach, causing her to fall to the ground,” the brief said. “Rosas then shot Makayla 5 times. One shot was to her head. He knew he had killed her after the 2nd shot, but he continued to shoot bullets into her body.”
He left the victim where she was slain, and he and Duarte headed back toward Indio, dumping the .380-caliber semiautomatic pistol that he'd used to kill Massey on a roadside.
Massey's remains were discovered within a couple of days, leading to a sheriff's investigation that pointed to Rosas as the murderer.
The defendants were arrested without incident on Avenue 42 in Indio on June 30, 2019.
Court papers claimed both Rosas and Duarte had conspired in retail fraud, but neither had documented prior felony convictions in Riverside County.
Prosecutors did not seek a death sentence for Duarte. She was convicted in June of 1st-degree murder and being an accessory to a felony. Jurors also agreed with "special circumstance" allegations that she had helped kill a witness to a crime and had lain in wait. She was sentenced in August to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Rosas was tried separately and convicted of 1st-degree murder and attempted murder, along with the 2 special circumstance allegations and sentence-enhancing gun and great bodily injury allegations. The jury recommended capital punishment.
California currently has a moratorium in place on executions, ordered by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2019. The last execution in the state occurred in 2006.
