The last of five defendants in the 2006 murder of a man in a downtown Santa Rosa parking garage was sentenced Monday to six years in prison.
Nicholas Angel Mejia, 32, of Santa Rosa, who pleaded no contest to gang participation and being an accessory in the murder of Matthew Toste, will be out in about one year with credit for time already served, prosecutors said.
His sentence covers a separate assault and drug conviction connected to a shooting at the Fountain Grove Inn about three weeks before Toste, a 32-year-old construction worker, was slain in the Seventh Street garage.
Judge Lawrence Antolini handed down the maximum sentences in both cases after prosecutor Spencer Brady argued Mejia helped instigate the confrontation with Toste, who had come to the defense of his cousin and another woman.
Toste was shot twice in the chest by co-defendant Joseph Lopez Jr., 21, also of Santa Rosa. Lopez was sentenced last month to more than 40 years to life in prison.
Brady said that during a recently completed 90-day diagnostic evaluation of Mejia at San Quentin State Prison, Mejia was cocky and refused to discuss his involvement in the Toste shooting with psychologists.
"He showed no insight or remorse," Brady said.
On Monday, Toste's sister, Cathy Toman, who is raising Toste's 9-year-old son, reminded Antolini of the crime's human toll.
She said her nephew suffers depression and post-traumatic stress from the loss of his father. In school, he recently drew a picture of his dad lying lifeless on the ground with his attackers surrounding him, she said.
Toman urged Antolini to deny Mejia's request to be placed in a drug treatment program in San Francisco instead of shipping off to state prison.
"He's a criminal and I'm asking you to give him everything you can," Toman said in court.
Toste was gunned down Dec. 3, 2006 as he walked with the two women to a nightclub. Five men including Lopez and Mejia were charged in the killing.
Mejia and Santa Rosa residents Joseph Lopez Sr., 42, and Raul Lopez-Granados, 22, pleaded to lesser charges. Lopez-Granados was sentenced to more than five years in prison and Lopez Sr. received a sentence of more than three years. The fifth defendant, Paul Whiterock, 30, was acquitted by a jury of all charges.
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