Gang member sentenced to life in Buena Park man's murder freed at 39

A Pacoima gang member sentenced to life in prison for his role in the high-profile 2002 murder of a Buena Park businessman was quietly released last month after nearly 18 years behind bars, the Southern California News Group has learned.

Gerardo Lopez was three months shy of 18 when he participated in the botched kidnapping of David Montemayor, a 44-year-old Buena Park businessman who ran a family trucking business in the unincorporated area of Dominguez Hills between Carson and Long Beach.

Lopez was tried as an adult, convicted and sentenced in 2006 to life in prison without the possibility of parole for Montemayor’s shooting death, although his role was limited to the kidnapping, not the murder.

In 2017, California passed a law that retroactively eliminated life without parole sentences for juveniles. The new law provided that anyone sentenced to life without parole for an offense committed before the age of 18 would be eligible for parole at a youthful parole hearing within the 25th year of incarceration.

Thus, Lopez was sentenced in April 2017 to a sentence ranging from 50 years to life to allow for the possibility of parole due to his age at the time of the murder.

Under another California law, Assembly Bill 1812, passed two years later, inmates sentenced to life without parole for crimes committed as juveniles were allowed to seek a lesser sentence after serving at least 15 years in prison. So Lopez asked the court for a sentence reduction.

The bill outlines factors that courts should consider when determining a new sentence, including:

The inmate’s disciplinary record and his rehabilitation record while incarcerated. Lopez, now 39, was incarcerated in Wasco, Corcoran, Delano and Imperial County jails and committed two serious rule violations, said Mary Xjimenez, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Evidence on whether age, time spent in prison, and declining physical fitness reduced the prisoner’s risk of future violence.
Evidence that shows that circumstances have changed since the prisoner’s initial conviction, such that the prisoner’s continued incarceration is no longer in the interests of justice.

Despite objections from the Orange County District Attorney’s Office, Superior Court Judge Vibhav Mittal resentenced Lopez on August 16, 2024, changing his criminal conviction to a juvenile conviction and ordering his release.

Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer condemned the decision.

“California law has evolved to the point where there is no longer any truth in convictions and consequences for the most heinous crimes are minimal or nonexistent,” Spitzer said in a statement. “This case is another painful example of how the rights of cold-blooded killers continue to trump those of victims.”

Lopez was essentially given a “get out of jail free card” without a parole board ever determining that he no longer posed a danger to society, Spitzer added.

Four days after being re-sentenced, Lopez was released from prison and has since self-deported to Mexico, authorities said.

Susan Montemayor, 64, Montemayor’s widow and a resident of Buena Park, said she was disappointed by Lopez’s release. “I realize there’s not much I can do,” she said. “I feel a little helpless at this point.”

Five other people have been convicted of Montemayor’s murder, including his older sister, Deborah Perna of Anaheim, who initiated the kidnapping plot and is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

Additionally, Edelmira Corona of Pico Rivera, who worked with Perna in the trucking business, was sentenced to 14 years in prison and has since been released. Three gang members — Anthony Navarro of Canyon County, Armando Macias of Lancaster and Alberto Martinez of Castaic — remain on death row.

Prosecutors said Perna became jealous after learning that her father planned to hand over control of the family business to Montemayor, whom she believed was stealing the company.

Perna asked Corona to help him organize Montemayor’s assassination. Corona and Perna then enlisted the help of Navarro, who recruited members of his San Fernando Valley gang, including Lopez, to carry out the kidnapping and murder.

Montemayor was abducted from his family’s trucking business in Dominguez Hills and placed in a car by gang members, who thought they would find a small fortune in cash hidden in coffee cans in the garage of his Buena Park home.

However, while they were en route, Montemayor foiled the kidnapping by fleeing the car rather than driving the gang members to his home, where his wife and two children were waiting for them.

Macias shot Montemayor as he tried to flee, sparking a wild police chase through the streets of Orange County that was captured by television helicopters. The gang members were arrested when the vehicle crashed.

Originally published: September 13, 2024 at 5:08 p.m.