A man will spend the rest of his life behind bars after a jury convicted him of first-degree murder in the 2022 shooting death of 59-year-old Ronald Ray McKinney, a killing prosecutors say was ordered by a woman who believed McKinney had stolen drugs from her. Adrian Salgado Carranza, 48, was sentenced to 71 years and four months to life in state prison on charges that included first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit a crime.
According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, Carranza was convicted by an El Cajon Superior Court jury before the lengthy sentence was handed down. McKinney’s body was discovered off the roadway in the 3500 block of Millar Ranch Road in unincorporated Spring Valley around 7 a.m. on January 23, 2022, after hikers came across it, per the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department. The sheriff’s office noted at the time that it ruled the death a homicide while withholding the preliminary cause of death to protect the integrity of the investigation.
Four-Month Manhunt Ends in Late-Night Arrests
It took nearly four months for investigators to make arrests. San Diego County Sheriff’s deputies executed search warrants late at night on May 16, 2022, taking Carranza into custody at a home in the 1400 block of Broadway in El Cajon and arresting Brandyce Blanche Cuesta-Marquez at a home in the 3900 block of Conrad Drive in Spring Valley, the sheriff’s department reported. Carranza was booked into San Diego Central Jail, while Cuesta-Marquez, then 32, was booked into the Las Colinas Detention and Reentry Facility in Santee — the county’s primary detention and reentry center for female inmates.
Preliminary hearing testimony later laid out the prosecution’s theory of how the killing unfolded. According to the sandiegouniontribune.com account, Cuesta-Marquez provided Carranza with the handgun and instructed him to kill McKinney because she believed he had stolen drugs from her.
Two Very Different Outcomes for Co-Defendants
The paths the co-defendants took through the justice system diverged sharply. Cuesta-Marquez, now 37, pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to 24 years in state prison. Carranza instead took his case to trial, where the El Cajon Superior Court jury convicted him on the more severe charges, leading to his far longer sentence…