Week in Review : MAJOR EVENTS, IMAGES AND PEOPLE IN ORANGE COUNTY NEWS : MISCELLANY / NEWSMAKERS AND MILESTONES

Teofilo (Junior) Medina was sentenced Wednesday to die.

Superior Court Judge James K. Turner approved a jury’s recommendation for the man convicted of fatally shooting three people during a robbery spree in 1984. Medina, the judge agreed, should die in the gas chamber at San Quentin prison.

“It’s hard for me to say that anyone should be put to death. But this man should be,” said Ronald Martin, whose son, Craig, was killed in a Corona mini-market Oct. 19, 1984.

Carmen Cabrera, whose son Horacio Ariza Jr. was killed at a Santa Ana gas station and mini-market the day before Martin’s death, said she hopes the “new California Supreme Court . . . will not allow you to go off and (will) make sure that you are punished as you punished my son.” After her testimony, she began to sob and had to be helped from the courtroom.

In sentencing Medina, the judge described his conduct during the robberies as “cruel, depraved and violent.”

Judge Turner said the case was a “classic, textbook example of why there is a need for the death penalty.”