People v. Velasquez CA4/3

FACTS

I.

THE MURDER

In January 2017, then 20-year-old Velasquez was enlisted by Charles Coghill—an errand runner for California prison inmate Gregory “Lou” Munoz—to go collect money from known drug dealer Robert Rios. Coghill teamed Velasquez with two older men, 36-year-old Ricardo Valenzuela and 31-year-old Ysrael Cordova. Coghill armed the three recruits with guns, dropped them off near Rios’s house in Placentia shortly before midnight, and waited nearby. Seeing unfamiliar armed men on his home video surveillance, Rios walked outside and a confrontation ensued. Velasquez struck Rios in the back of the head, knocking him to the ground, and the other men entered Rios’s house. In their absence, Rios stood up and tackled Velasquez, and the other men quickly returned outside. Moments later, Cordova fatally shot Rios and also accidentally shot Velasquez in the leg with a Mac-10 assault rifle. The entire encounter lasted about one minute. Velasquez and the other two recruits fled to Coghill’s car, and the four men sped away. Instead of taking Velasquez to a hospital, Coghill left him bleeding on a street curb.

2 Velasquez called his best friend John, who picked him up and drove him…