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A Texas auto store proprietor has been sentenced to 35 years in jail after he shot lifeless an harmless man he falsely accused of being a thief — after which later fled the nation to his native El Salvador to evade justice.
“A person who deliberately kills an harmless stranger after which does every thing he can to cowl up his crime and run from accountability deserves to spend a long time in jail for the ache he prompted,” Harris County District Lawyer Kim Ogg stated in a assertion.
Oscar Aristides Garcia, 35, was sentenced final Wednesday after pleading responsible to homicide for the Oct. 2018 killing of 37-year-old Nicolas Bautista.
Prosecutors requested that Garcia be sentenced to 50 years in jail. Garcia’s protection workforce argued for 15 years.
Based on investigators, Garcia was in his Pasadena, Texas, transmission-repair store on Oct. 28, 2018, when he noticed Bautista stroll by along with his girlfriend. The couple had been on their option to a restaurant for Sunday brunch.
“Garcia mistakenly believed Bautista was a person Garcia thought was stealing pickup tailgates from the store,” the DA’s workplace acknowledged.
Bautista was by no means implicated in any theft. However Garcia took a truck that he had been engaged on within the store and a shotgun, and adopted the 37-year-old man and his girlfriend to confront him concerning the thefts.
After discovering that the restaurant close to Garcia’s store was closed, Bautista and his girlfriend took an Uber to a different eatery, with Garcia following them, in line with prosecutors.
After ending their meal, the couple took one other Uber residence, and Garcia continued to pursue all of them the best way to their deal with on Wafer Avenue in Pasadena.
There, Garcia received out of the truck and began to argue with Bautista in Spanish — a language the opposite man didn't converse. Bautista’s girlfriend knew Spanish and instructed Garcia that he was mistaken.
When Bautista circled and walked away to name the police, prosecutors stated Garcia shot him within the again. He was pronounced lifeless at a hospital a short while later.
Garcia additionally pointed the rifle at Bautista’s girlfriend and pulled the set off, however the weapon didn't hearth.
Garcia picked up the shell casing earlier than fleeing to a different mechanic’s store and demanding to retailer the truck used through the killing inside that individual’s storage.
The gunman then returned to his personal store and destroyed his safety digicam’s recording system so there could be no document of Bautista strolling by the enterprise, investigators stated.
Garcia additionally broke into a close-by taqueria and destroyed its safety digicam’s recorder, which captured him following Bautista.
Garcia then shuttered his restore enterprise and fled to El Salvador, forsaking his pregnant spouse and three kids. The household later joined the fugitive overseas.
After greater than two years in hiding, he returned to the US and was arrested by the US Marshals Service.
Assistant District Lawyer Ryan Volkmer, who prosecuted the case, stated final week that listening to Bautista’s household and pals testify in court docket about dropping him was heartbreaking.
“He was a beloved son, a beloved brother and a beloved boyfriend,” Volkmer stated. “He labored laborious and is remembered very fondly, they usually’re glad they lastly received justice.”
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