Man Convicted of Murdering Sheriff’s Deputy During Attempted Robbery

Man Convicted of Murdering Sheriff’s
Deputy During Attempted Robbery

April 22, 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contacts: Joe Scott, Director of Communications
Sandi Gibbons, Public Information Officer
Jane Robison, News Secretary
(213) 974-3525

LONG BEACH – A Long Beach jury returned a first-degree murder conviction today against a 27-year-old man in connection with the 2006 fatal shooting of off-duty Sheriff’s Deputy Maria Cecilia Rosa. The trial now moves into the penalty phase since the District Attorney’s office is seeking the death penalty.
The jury deliberated nearly a week before convicting Frank Christopher Gonzalez of the murder and finding true the special circumstance of murder during an attempted robbery. The jury also convicted Gonzalez of attempted robbery and found true allegations that he personally used a handgun to kill the deputy.

Deputy District Attorney Patrick Connolly, who is prosecuting the case with Deputy District Attorney Karen Thorp, said the penalty phase of the trial begins on Friday in the Long Beach court of Judge Joan Comparet-Cassani.

Gonzalez, who prosecutors argued fired the fatal shot from a .22-caliber handgun, is the second man convicted. Last December, another jury in Judge Comparet-Cassani’s court convicted 21-year-old Justin Ashley Flint of first-degree murder and attempted robbery, along with allegations that a principal in the crime was armed. That jury found the special circumstance not true, however, and in January, Flint was sentenced to 29 years to life in prison.

Deputy Rosa, 30, was killed on March 28, 2006, when she walked out of a friend’s home in Long Beach. It was a few minutes before 6 a.m. and the deputy was on her way to work at the Inmate Reception Center at Men’s Central Jail in Los Angeles.

Prosecutors said she walked to her car in the driveway and opened the trunk. As she did, the defendants – both on bicycles – rode up and confronted her.

The deputy tried to draw her service weapon, but instead was shot to death, prosecutors said. They said she was shot twice and died within minutes, despite attempts by good Samaritans and paramedics to revive her.

A break in the case for Long Beach police investigators came after DNA found on the handlebar grip of a bicycle left at the scene eventually led to Gonzalez and Flint. Both men by this time were in state prison on convictions of other crimes. They were charged in September 2006.

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