MAYWOOD : Mother of Officer’s Killer Asks Jury to Spare His Life
Speaking softly in Spanish, the mother of a man convicted of killing a Maywood policeman urged a Los Angeles jury on Monday to send her son to prison “until God asks for him.”
Virginia Contreras, wearing a white floral print dress that her son Jose gave her for Mother’s Day, pleaded with the panel not to give her son the death penalty.
The Honduran woman, who had never been in the United States until she was asked to testify on her son’s behalf, seldom glanced at the 22-year-old, who wiped away tears from time to time.
She asked the panel to “let his punishment be (prison), until God asks for him.”
Contreras, Edgardo Fuentes and Hector Reyna were found guilty last Thursday of the May 29, 1992, slaying of Officer John Hoglund, who was shot as he responded to a silent alarm at a Maywood market.
Hoglund, 46, was the first law enforcement officer in the community’s 69-year history to be killed in the line of duty.
All three of the men are subject to the death penalty because the jury found that the crime included the special circumstances of murder of a police officer and murder in the course of a robbery and attempting to avoid arrest.
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