LOS ANGELES (CNS) – A man whom the prosecution contended was the mastermind of the beating death of a 20-year-old man whose body was found over the side of a mountain road in Azusa Canyon was sentenced Friday to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Want to get caught up on what’s happening in SoCal every weekday afternoon? Click to follow The L.A. Local wherever you get podcasts.
Superior Court Judge Lisa B. Lench — who denied the defense’s motion for a new trial — called it one of the “most brutal” murder cases she has seen, and told Matthew Capiendo, 27, that she couldn’t understand how a person can do what was done involving the May 2018 killing of Julian Hamori-Andrade.
Capiendo — the only one of the five defendants to go to trial in connection with the killing — was convicted last November of first-degree murder and kidnapping.
Jurors also found true the special circumstance allegations of murder while lying in wait and murder during the commission of a kidnapping and murder during the commission of a robbery, along with an allegation that Capiendo personally used a deadly or dangerous weapon.