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Jury Recommends Death for Gunman
Convicted of Killing Off-Duty Sheriff’s Deputy

May 8, 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 recommended death today for a 27-year-old man convicted of first-degree murder for his role in the 2006 shooting death of off-duty Sheriff’s Deputy Maria Cecilia Rosa.

Deputy District Attorney Patrick Connolly of Long Beach Branch Office, who prosecuted the case with Deputy District Attorney Karen Thorp, said Frank Christopher Gonzalez showed no emotion when the jury’s recommendation was read.

Long Beach Superior Court Judge Joan Comparet-Cassani ordered the defendant back tomorrow for a sentencing hearing.

On April 22, the same jury convicted Gonzalez of using a .22-caliber handgun to kill Deputy Rosa during an attempted robbery. Gonzalez is the second man convicted.

Last December, another jury convicted 21-year-old Justin Ashley Flint of first-degree murder and attempted robbery. 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 twice, prosecutors said. Deputy Rosa 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 were in state prison on convictions of other crimes when they were charged in September 2006.

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