A 34-year-old man who gunned down his estranged wife as she slept at a mobile home in La Quinta because he was inflamed over notions she was having affairs with other men was convicted Thursday of first-degree murder.
An Indio jury deliberated roughly two days before finding Jose Valles Meza of La Quinta guilty of the murder count, a special-circumstance allegation of lying in wait and sentence-enhancing gun and great bodily injury allegations for the slaying of Patricia Cesena, also of La Quinta, in 2019.
Riverside County Superior Court Judge James Hawkins scheduled a sentencing hearing for April 28 at the Larson Justice Center.
Meza, who is being held without bail at the Benoit Detention Center, is slated to receive life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The defendant killed Cesena in the Dune Palms Mobile Estates at 46400 Dune Palms Road in the predawn hours of Jan. 27, 2019, obsessed with the idea she was seeing other men.
While his and his estranged wife’s four kids slept, Meza fired into the home through a bedroom window, fatally wounding the woman, according to sheriff’s investigators.
The defendant fled the location, driving south into Imperial County, where he was pulled over by a California Highway Patrol officer on suspicion of speeding and drunken driving.
While being booked into jail, Meza blurted out that he had “witnessed a murder,” according to CHP Officer Michael Bernardino.
After inquiring further, the officer was able to ascertain where the shooting had occurred, and deputies were sent to the mobile home in La Quinta to conduct a welfare check shortly before 6 a.m., roughly three hours after the attack. Investigator Martin Alfaro testified during Meza’s 2020 preliminary hearing that Cesena was discovered dead from a single gunshot to the head. Her kids were still sleeping when deputies entered the residence.
Investigator Armando Munoz testified that one of the kids, identified only as an 8-year-old girl, told detectives that her parents often fought and that cameras had been placed throughout the home so her father could spy on Cesena, believing he might catch her in an act of infidelity.
Meza had no documented prior felony convictions in Riverside County.