A man who conspired in the slaying of a drug supplier in Moreno Valley over debts the killers did not want to pay was sentenced Tuesday to 25 years in state prison.
Jorge Ceballos Olmedo, 31, pleaded guilty in 2015 to attempted murder and a sentence-enhancing gun use allegation in connection with the death two years earlier of Sergio Lopez Fernandez.
Riverside County Superior Court Judge David Gunn imposed the sentence stipulated under the plea agreement.
In December, Olmedo’s one-time crime partner, 41-year-old Adrian Maria Fernandez — who is not related to the victim — was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for gunning down Sergio Fernandez.
Adrian Fernandez and Enrique Baltazar Martinez, also 41, were convicted last November of first-degree murder and special circumstance allegations of lying in wait and killing in the course of a kidnapping.
Martinez is scheduled to be sentenced next week at the Riverside Hall of Justice. He’s being held without bail at the Robert Presley Jail.
According to trial testimony, Adrian Fernandez owed the victim an unspecified amount of money for a series of methamphetamine buys, and he decided to execute his supplier rather than pay him off.
The defendants and a fourth man who has never been identified orchestrated a set-up to isolate and kill Sergio Fernandez, according to the prosecution.
On the pretext of meeting to retire his drug debts, Adrian Fernandez arranged to rendezvous with the victim in the area of Alessandro and Perris boulevards in Moreno Valley on the night of Aug. 11, 2013. However, when Sergio Fernandez and a friend arrived at the designated spot in a Toyota Camry, they immediately detected trouble and sped away, according to Deputy District Attorney Mike Carney.
He said that over the next minute, the victims tried to leave the area, going in circles as the defendants shot at them and maneuvered to block their exit from a parking lot.
The man driving the Toyota, Luis Rodriguez, crashed after he collided with Olmedo’s vehicle. Despite being shot in the leg, Rodriguez was able to bail out of the Toyota and flee before the defendants encircled the sedan, from which Sergio Fernandez was unable to free himself.
Olmedo also ran away from the wreck.
Adrian Fernandez and Martinez then forcibly took the victim away in their car, holding him at gunpoint until reaching the rural area east of Moreno Valley known as the Badlands, where Sergio Fernandez was fatally shot in the head execution-style, according to sheriff’s investigators.
His body was discovered five days later.
Over the ensuing months, homicide detectives pieced together the events and evidence, connecting each of the defendants to the killing.
The men were eventually arrested in different locations without a struggle.
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