A California appeals court panel on Monday upheld the murder conviction for a man who killed a Long Beach couple and their three-year-old son on Halloween in 2019 .
The split ruling, which saw a majority of the panel from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal reject the man’s claims that there was not enough evidence to support his murder conviction and that jurors in this trial should not have seen the autopsy photos of two of the victims killed in the crash.
Carlo Adrian Navarro, now 25, is serving a 25-year-to-life sentence for the deaths of Raihan Dakhil Awaida, 32, her husband Joseph, 30, and their three-year-old son Omar.
“The severity of the injuries Raihan and Omar suffered showed how wantonly Navarro was acting when he inflicted those injuries,” Associate Justice Gregory J. Weingart wrote in the ruling, with Associate Justice Helen I. Bendix concurring in the ruling.
The panel’s majority noted in a 2-1 ruling that Navarro drove his SUV about 30 to 40 mph over the speed limit on a residential street on Halloween evening when people were out walking, went through multiple stop signs without stopping and was traveling at such a high speed that he lost control and drove on to the sidewalk, where he struck the Awaida family and then continued to drive until he hit signs and toppled a concrete water fountain before finally stopping.