Family pleads for death penalty in Healdsburg slaying

<p>As the family of a murder victim asked Wednesday for the ultimate vengeance against his killer, a Sonoma County judge told them he wished he could do more than empathize with their anger and emotion.</p><p>The father and a brother of Pedro “Pepe” Gonzalez Ruiz, 17, gunned down by his cousin Jose Mendez Gonzalez,in June 2007, asked Judge Lawrence Antolini to give Mendez a death sentence.</p><p>Mendez was convicted in March of first-degree murder, but was not eligible for the death penalty. By law, the maximum term he could receive would be 25 years to life in prison for that count.</p><p>Adding another 25-year term for the personal use of a gun, Antolini ordered Mendez to a term of 50 years to life in prison.</p><p>“What I want is to send him to sleep like he sent my son to sleep,” Angel Gonzalez said through a Spanish interpreter. “Or that they have him in jail for life with absolutely no communication. Or to have people be sent to give him a lethal injection. Or to be condemned to die.”</p><p>“I want justice to be served,” said Ruiz’s brother, Jaime. “I’m with my father.”</p><p>Mendez admitted much of the crime in interviews with police, but said another person was present. He said he was upset with his cousin over the affections of a girl and other issues. Both young men worked at Molsberry Market in Larkfield.</p><p>Mendez told detectives he arranged for the three to drive down a deserted dirt road west of Healdsburg, where he shot his cousin in the back of the head with a semi-automatic handgun. He then shot him once in the chest and twice more in the skull.</p><p>Mendez dragged his dying cousin off the roadway and dumped his body on a tree limb in the roadside brush.</p><p>The victim was a student at Marce Becerra Academy, the continuation school on the Healdsburg High School campus.</p><p>A third cousin, Miguel Guzman, then 17, was convicted as a juvenile with being an accessory after the fact.</p><p>Antolini said he understands the family’s feelings in the wake of losing a loved one in such a violent way.</p><p>“There is no substitute for the taking of a son, a brother. None,” he said. “This is the most senseless, absolutely dastardly crime that I have had .<TH>.<TH>. . The pain, the anger. I totally do understand that.”</p><p>Prosecutor Chuck Arden called it a “senseless, stupid murder” done out of some sense of disrespect. “What’s really troubling is that the victim was his own family member,” he said.</p><p>After his arrest, Mendez took detectives to the scene and showed them where Gonzalez was shot and where he said he threw a gun, gloves and a black shirt out of his car as he drove away. </p><p>He told detectives he continued shooting Gonzalez because his cousin, still alive, was making disturbing noises.</p><p>Through his attorney, Walter Rubenstein, Mendez expressed sorrow to his extended family. “There is certainly remorse and regret for being involved in these matters,” Rubenstein said. Mendez did not make any statements during the sentencing hearing.</p><p>Antolini said he was pleased to see some kind of sorrow from Mendez, “because up until now I was wondering if there was any.”</p><p>“I wish I could give you more,” he told the Gonzalez family, whose members nearly filled the courtroom. “It’s all I have, to say I do understand.”</p><p>Rubenstein said Mendez plans to appeal. There is a two-month window for filing legal notice to appeal the conviction.</p>