Oxnard Man Sentenced For Using Car To Kill Someone

Wednesday November 06, 2024

      An Oxnard man who had been charged with murder for using his car to kill another man has instead been sentenced on a lesser charge.

     41-year-old Pedro Gutierrez Guzman pleaded guilty in September to voluntary manslaughter and assault with a deadly weapon in the May 11, 2019 death of 30-year-old Ricardo Torres Rojas of Oxnard.

     Prosecutors say that in the late morning of that day officers and other first responders arrived 1300 block of Bluebell Street and found Rojas down in the roadway.

     He was rushed to the trauma center at VCMC where he died.

     Detectives determined that Rojas has been struck by Guzman's vehicle in the west alley of the 2000 block of Mariposa Street and then dragged under the vehicle for over a block to Bluebell where Rojas became dislodged from the vehicle.

     Guzman then left the scene but he was later identified as the suspect and arrested for murder then allowed to plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter instead.

     Wednesday he was sentenced to 15 years in prison but he will spend about half that time because of credits he received in jail since his arrest.