Jury Urges Execution in Gruesome Slaying

A jury recommended Tuesday that a La Puente gang member convicted of a triple murder receive the death penalty for the most gruesome of those slayings--one that involved the gouging out of the victim’s eyes.

The Pomona Superior Court jury recommended that Nicholas Santino Rodriguez, 25, be executed for the May 11, 1999, murder of Humberto Salas, who was beaten and strangled and had his eyes cut out of their sockets. Rodriguez then showed the eyeballs to Salas’ terrified female friend.

After about three days of deliberating, the panel also recommended that Rodriguez receive two life sentences for the murders of Tommy Garnica, 16, and Juan Gonzalez, 15, both shot to death during a botched holdup in La Puente just before Salas was killed the same night.

The jury recommended that Arthur Torres, 23, an accomplice convicted in the killings, receive three life sentences without the possibility of parole.

“You get hardened in this job, but the carnage in this case and trauma is hard to believe,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Camacho of the Hard-Core Gang Unit. “If there was ever a case that warrants the death penalty, it was this one.”

Judge Charles Horan is scheduled to sentence the two men July 30.

Both asked jurors during the penalty phase to recommend execution, with Rodriguez saying he was not afraid to die.

“They basically confessed during the penalty phase and tried to act remorseful,” Camacho said. Jurors were also brought to tears during testimony by relatives of the victims and defendants, including Torres’ 11-year-old brother.

During the trial, Rodriguez’s attorney argued that his client had been under the influence of methamphetamine and alcohol, which caused him to act in a “bestial way.”

Jurors convicted the pair a week ago of the three murders, robbery, attempted robbery, carjacking, kidnapping and torture.

The night of the crimes began with a botched carjacking and a robbery of a man at a La Puente carwash. Then the defendants held up Garnica and Gonzalez. Rodriguez shot them in front of two witnesses, delivering the fatal bullet to Gonzalez as he begged for his life.

Salas, 27, was killed later after the defendants flagged down the car in which he was riding. Camacho said Salas was attacked because he belonged to a rival set of the same gang to which Rodriguez and Torres belonged. The two ordered his female companion to drive them to a remote stretch of Turnbull Canyon Road, where Salas was murdered.

The pair had the woman drive back to La Puente, but they jumped out of the car when sheriff’s deputies began pursuing them. Rodriguez was captured the next day, and Torres was caught in January after being featured on the TV show “America’s Most Wanted.”