A 29-year-old man was sentenced to more than 50 years to life in prison for his role in the drug-related robbery and murder of a Palm Desert man on Christmas Day 2016.
Roger Rodriguez of La Quinta was convicted of murder and robbery on Thursday at the Larson Justice Center in Indio. According to court documents, he was sentenced to 11 years and 8 months, with an intermediate sentence ranging from 50 years to life.
Rodriguez, along with Indio residents Alejandro Zendejas and Anthony Garcia, were charged with killing Skyler Siva, 24, on Christmas Day 2016.
Zendejas pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in October 2018. He is set to be sentenced on March 20, according to court documents.
Garcia was convicted of both murder and robbery in November 2021. He was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, according to court records.
A hung jury resulted in a mistrial in Rodriguez’s case in 2021.
Deputies discovered the victim on his sofa, wounded but still alive, just after 4 p.m. on December 25, 2016, in the 43400 block of Illinois Avenue in Palm Desert, according to the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department. He died at the hospital less than an hour later.
The trio went to Siva’s house that day to get marijuana from him. Rodriguez and Garcia robbed and shot him, with Zendejas acting as the getaway driver, according to court documents.
Witnesses saw Rodriguez fleeing the home and caught him three days later in Palm Desert, according to court filings. Garcia and Zendejas allegedly departed the scene in Rodriguez’s vehicle.
Garcia was captured on January 4, 2017, in La Quinta, and Zendejas was apprehended 20 days later in Palm Desert.
Zendejas received a criminal record for assault. Rodriguez had previous felony convictions for burglary and assault with a deadly weapon. Garcia, for his part, has no reported felony convictions, but he does have an unsolved robbery case.
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