Gay Man’s Killer Gets 25-to-Life Term

A Riverside man was sentenced Friday to 25 years to life in prison for the June 2002 murder of Jeffrey Owens, a gay man who was stabbed in the back outside a Riverside nightclub.

A jury found Dorian Lee Gutierrez, 22, guilty of second-degree murder last month.

Owens, 40, who suffered a punctured lung and ruptured artery, bled to death at a Moreno Valley hospital when he was mistakenly given 100,000 units of a blood-thinning drug -- a dose 100 times greater than was necessary, according to a coroner’s report.

Riverside County prosecutor John Davis downplayed that event in court Friday, saying that one of Owens’ wounds came within an inch of his heart, contending his brief survival was only “through the grace of God.”