SANTA ANA : 1-Year Jail Terms for Bound Man’s Death

Two sisters who left a boyfriend of one bound and gagged in a closet to teach him a lesson after a violent argument were each sentenced Friday to one year in Orange County Jail for manslaughter.

Stephanie Rene Vick, 28, and Sonya Lee Vick, 33, had pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter last month. But as a condition of the negotiated plea with the district attorney’s office, the women had to say publicly that they had killed 42-year-old Antonio Ariza, a native of Panama who had been dating the older sister.

When Stephanie Vick first mumbled “yes” that she had killed Ariza, Superior Court Judge David O. Carter made her repeat it. When it was Sonya Vick’s turn, she mumbled her “yes” also. Carter made her repeat it too.

The two women, who have been held in Orange County Jail since their arrest last summer, gave their answers from behind a wire mesh holding cell within the jail, where they attempted to dodge photographers.

Carter fined each $100 in addition to the jail sentence and three years of probation after their release from jail.

Ariza, who had been living in the home the sisters shared with a third sister in the 1700 block of Richland Avenue in Santa Ana, had been bound and gagged and left in a closet after an argument on June 9.

Defense lawyers said the two sisters had overpowered him after he hit one of them. They tied him up with television cable, wire and bedsheets, using part of the bed linen to gag his mouth.

Ariza choked to death on the linen, medical evidence showed. But prosecutors say Ariza may have indirectly caused his own death.

He managed to free himself from the closet, but in twisting his body he unintentionally forced the cloth gag deeper into his mouth, cutting off his air passage.

“These women did not intend to kill him, but what they did was extremely stupid and negligent,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Jeoffrey L. Robinson said after the sentencing.

Robinson said there were some reports that the two Vick sisters had called neighbors asking them to check the house, apparently in an attempt to see if Ariza was all right.

Involuntary manslaughter charges, rather than murder charges, were filed at the beginning of the case, Robinson said.

Last month, when the women pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter, Robinson refused to comment on whether his office had agreed to the one-year sentence in exchange for the plea. Robinson explained Friday that his office had still been trying to verify information at the time.

Sonya Vick’s attorney, John D. Barnett, said that one reason he believed prosecutors agreed to the negotiated plea was that neither woman had a criminal record, though the court noted for the record that both were former drug users.

Sonya Vick will be released two weeks earlier than her sister because she had been arrested first while her sister was in Ohio on an extended honeymoon.

No one appeared at Friday’s short court proceeding either from the victim’s family or from the Vick family, though one lawyer involved said Stephanie Vick’s new husband has been supportive of her and plans to wait for her release from jail.

Stephanie and Sonya Vick reportedly came to Orange County from Kansas City last spring to help their sister, Sheryl Lynn Vick, 34, after she was about to be evicted from where she was living and had to give up her baby to county authorities. Ariza reportedly followed them from Kansas City.