BALTIMORE (WBFF) — A 25-year-old Baltimore man has been sentenced to 45 years in prison for the 2023 murder of a Patterson High School student.
Roger Alvarado-Mendoza submitted an Alford plea to first-degree murder July 17 before Baltimore Circuit Judge Sylvester Cox Jr., court records show. An Alford plea is not an admission of guilt, but rather concedes that prosecutors would have enough evidence to convict had the case gone to trial. It is treated the same as a guilty plea in terms of sentencing.
Alvarado-Mendoza was arrested March 2023 in Texas, two weeks after city police found 16-year-old Izaiah Carter shot in the Joseph E. Lee Park, next to the victim’s high school. Authorities said Carter, a sophomore at Patterson and a Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps cadet, suffered multiple wounds, including at least one to the head…