Santa Rosa gang member sent to prison for attack

A Santa Rosa gang member was sentenced Tuesday to eight years in prison for his involvement in a 2013 attack in which a man was stabbed and his son beaten.

Gerardo Vasquez-Cruz, 18, joined fellow sureño gang members in the Dec. 28, 2013, attack on the 38-year-old man and his 18-year-old son at an apartment complex on Rockwell Place, District Attorney Jill Ravitch said in a statement. The son was beaten while his father was stabbed repeatedly in the torso, she said.

The pair had been visiting relatives in the neighborhood for the holidays.

Vasquez-Cruz appeared Tuesday before Judge Rene Chouteau, who handed him the eight-year prison sentence and required him to register as a gang member and pay restitution to cover the victims’ medical bills. He pleaded no contest on Nov. 12 to assault with a deadly weapon with the infliction of great bodily injury, assault with force and active participation in a criminal street gang, the prosecutor’s office said.