John Taylor and Ryan Jones were found guilty of special circumstances murder by an O.C. Superior Court jury, for killing Osvaldo Garcia of Santa Ana, a 29-year-old, during a robbery on Sept. 16, 2019.
The two criminals are now facing up to life in prison with no possibility of parole.
A third suspect, Antonio Lamont Triplett, was previously convicted during an earlier trial of special circumstances murder. Triplett was refferred to in the earlier trial by prosecutors as the “bag man” who ran off with Garcia’s backpack and the dispensary money. Triplett sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Garcia’s job was to pick up and transport cash from a marijuana dispensary in South Los Angeles. Marijuana is still illegal at the Federal level so dispensaries cannot use banks to store their money. As such they often have a lot of cash on hand.
On Sept. 15, 2019, Garcia left the dispensary at around 11 p.m. with a backpack filled with tens of thousands of dollars cash. He had made plans to meet his girlfriend that night at an In-N-Out in Santa Ana.
Fate intervened as a vehicle that the prosecutors alleged was driven by Jones forced Garcia’s car off of the roadway in Santa Ana, near the Bristol and 17th Street instersection, near Santa Ana College. The collision was captured on surveillance cameras at Santa Ana College.
Garcia’s vehicle went over a sidewalk and ended up on a raised embankment and hedges. Garcia had been on the phone with his girlfriend, who heard him yell “They are shooting at me, help me!”
Two men, identified by prosecutors as Taylor and Triplett, were captures on security camera footage as they got out of the other vehicle, ran up to Garcia’s car and began firing multiple gunshots. Garcia tried to escape by crawling out of the passenger window of his car, but he was pistol-whipped, beaten and shot five times.
During the recent trial, prosecutors alleged that Taylor was the one who beat and shot Garcia, who died at the scene.
The prosecutor, Senior Deputy District Attorney Anna McIntire, told the jury that “This was an execution and a robbery,” during her closing arguments last week.
An SAPD police vehicle passed by on Bristol Street shortly after the shooting, but the officer or officers apparently didn’t see the crashed vehicle or Garcia’s body.
Triplett ran off moments later with Garcia’s backpack, cutting through campus and a nearby shopping center.
Minutes later, the vehicle that had forced Garcia off the road left with the other men. They had seemingly gotten away with a vicious murder and armed robbery.
Garcia’s girlfriend went to Santa Ana College and was quickly taken by police to the nearby SAPD Station. The police officers suddenly realized that Garcia’s girlfriend had never ended the call to her boyfriend’s phone, which had been stolen by one of the men.
With the help of a police helicopter, the investigators tracked Garcia’s phone to Corona, then along several Los Angeles-area freeways to a parking lot in Carson, where the occupants of several vehicles were seen moving items from one car to another.
Two vehicles were stopped by police as they left the lot in Carson. A third car, which had the stolen cell phone in it, was followed by officers to Long Beach.
Among those ultimately taken into custody that morning were Triplett, Taylor and Jones, as well as a woman who worked at the same dispensary as Garcia. In such crimes it is common for a dispensary employee to be involved as they tip off the robbers.
Blood on Triplett’s shoe connected him to Garcia via DNA. Cell phone data also showed Jones was near the dispensary earlier that night and Jones, Triplett and Taylor in Santa Ana at the time of the robbery and killing, according to the prosecutors.
Defense attorneys representing Jones and Taylor denied that they played a direct role in Garcia’s killing, to no avail.
Taylor told the jury that he was an apartment janitor, part time Uber driver and a drug addict. He claimed that he was tricked into allowing other men to use his car that night and was “high as a kite” at the time of the shooting, according to his attorney, Cameron Talley.
Taylor told the jury that the shooter was a man who went by the nickname “Hustle,” who he said was himself shot and killed in St. Louis shortly after Garcia’s slaying. Taylor said “Hustle” had convinced him to come along the night of Garcia’s killing by making him think it was going to be a marijuana deal, not an armed robbery.
Taylor said he was asleep in the car as someone else drove to Santa Ana, then was awakened by the “bang” of the collision with Garcia’s car. Minutes later, Taylor testified, he heard gunshots.
Taylor told the jury that he “was frightened.” He also said that he “heard the shots and I looked up and I see Hustle coming back in the car with a gun… He just said ‘Let’s go.’”
Talley, the defense attorney, told the jury that his client had been “duped.” “He had no idea whatsoever that his car was going to be used in a murder,” the defense attorney said. “He thought he was going to get some cheap pot.”
Both Talley and Jones’ attorney, Associate Public Defender Kelly Rozek, described the evidence against their clients as circumstantial.
“We have no clue what he knew or what his role was,” Rozek said of Jones during her closing arguments. “The prosecution wants you to fill in the blanks, they want you to fill in information you do not have.”
The prosecutor argued that as the suspected driver who ran Garcia off the road, Jones had a direct role in the killing. She added that Taylor’s testimony that he was asleep until collision was “ridiculous.”
Taylor and Jones are scheduled to return to court for sentencing on Dec. 13.
