Participant in Triple Murder Gets Term of 76 Years to Life

A judge Friday sentenced a 19-year-old man who participated in the drug-related slayings of three Clairemont residents to 76 years to life in state prison.

Manuel Flores Jr., who was 17 at the time of the Aug. 9, 1989, killings of a woman, her 3-year-old son and their roommate, was also fined $10,000, to be paid from prison wages.

Over objections from Deputy Dist. Atty. Lorraine Rooney, San Diego Superior Court Judge J. Perry Langford ordered Flores to be housed at the California Youth Authority until age 25, when he will be transferred to an adult prison to complete his term.

Both Flores and co-defendant Christopher Box, 22, were convicted in December of three counts of first-degree murder and attempted murder.

Because Box was an adult at the time of the murders, prosecutors sought and won the death sentence for him.

Prosecutors alleged that April Gilhausen, 20; her 3-year-old son, Bryan, and Kevin Chandler, 29, were stabbed and beaten to death in their home as part of a scheme to steal a pound of marijuana and $2,000 in cash.

The body of the boy and Chandler were found at different spots on Clairemont Mesa Boulevard, and the woman’s body was discovered in her bedroom later that day.

Also injured in the attack was Rodney Nicholson, 25, who was hit with a baseball bat by Box but ran away and later testified against both men.

The judge imposed a life term on Flores for his attempted-murder conviction involving Nicholson, which is to run consecutive with the other terms.

Prosecutor Rooney noted that, had Flores been six months older at the time of the crimes, he too would have qualified for special-circumstances allegations and been subject to a death penalty upon conviction.

“I think they’re equally guilty,” the judge said of the two men.