Man who Murdered San Diego Police Gets Death Sentence
By Teri Figueroa
Source The San Diego Union-Tribune
A San Diego man was sentenced to death Friday in the 2016 shooting death of San Diego police Officer Jonathan "J.D." De Guzman, who was gunned down behind the wheel of his patrol car.
Jesse Michael Gomez, 58, was convicted last year of first-degree murder and a special-circumstance allegation that Gomez knowingly killed a police officer. Gomez was also found guilty of attempted murder for shooting De Guzman's partner, and of being a felon in possession of a firearm.
It's the first death sentence handed down in San Diego County in a dozen years.
Gomez admitted at trial that he shot De Guzman and Officer Wade Irwin the night of July 28, 2016, when the pair tried to stop Gomez as he walked along a sidewalk on a dark street.
De Guzman, 43, died that night. De Guzman's partner now-Detective Wade Irwin was shot in the throat but survived, spending spent nearly a month hospitalized.
The Superior Court jury that last September found Gomez guilty of all charges also recommended he be executed.
De Guzman and his partner, Officer Wade Irwin, were members of the San Diego Police Department's gang suppression team. They were doing one final patrol for the night in the city's Southcrest neighborhood when a gunman opened fire on them on Acacia Grove Way shortly before 11 p.m. July 28, 2016.
Irwin said they had spotted Gomez at a corner with another person and the two abruptly split up. That raised suspicion for De Guzman, so the officers drove up behind Gomez. When Irwin got out of the patrol car and asked Gomez if he lived in the area, Gomez spun around suddenly and opened fire.
Although badly wounded, Irwin was able to shoot Gomez before Gomez ran off. Police found Gomez in a nearby ravine, unconscious and bleeding.
Gomez — who had been drinking and had used methamphetamine the day of the shooting — testified that he opened fire on the men, thinking they were gang members issuing a challenge — not police officers.
That, he said, was because they were tailing him slowly in a car as he walked on the darkened street, and also because Irwin asked him where he lived — a question often used as the opening salvo in a gang challenge.
In 2019, Gov. Gavin Newsom placed a moratorium on carrying out the death penalty in the state during his time in office.
That does not bar a judge from issuing a sentence of death, nor does it preclude prosecutors from continuing to pursue capital punishment in current cases.
Aside from Gomez, there is a second local case in which prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. The defendant is Cesar Alvarado, who is accused of killing a man mistaken for an undercover police officer and shooting and paralyzing a 19-year-old woman during a two-week crime spree in 2018.
As of Friday, there were 693 inmates on death row in California. Not including Gomez, 36 of them were sent there from San Diego County. The last was Derlyn Threats, now 40, convicted of killing a young Vista mother during a home burglary in 2005.
_______
©2022 The San Diego Union-Tribune.
Visit sandiegouniontribune.com.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
