| For Immediate Release August 17, 2011 |
Susan Kang Schroeder Chief of Staff Office: 714-347-8408 Cell: 714-292-2718 Farrah Emami |
OCDA TO OPPOSE PAROLE OF INMATE CONVICTED OF MURDER FOR STABBING AND BEATING GAS STATION EMPLOYEE
SANTA ANA – Orange County District Attorney (OCDA) Tony Rackauckas is opposing the parole of an inmate convicted of murdering a gas station employee by stabbing and beating him to death. Miguel Rodriguez, 39, is currently being held at Centinela State Prison in Imperial, CA. Rodriguez was sentenced Dec. 4, 1991, to 15 years to life in state prison after pleading guilty to one felony count of second degree murder. This case was originally prosecuted by former Deputy District Attorney Jeoffrey L. Robinson. Rodriguez is scheduled for a parole hearing tomorrow, Thursday, Aug. 18, 2011, at 10:30 a.m., at the prison before the Board of Parole Hearings, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitations.
Senior Deputy District Attorney Rebecca Olivieri will attend the hearing to oppose Rodriguez’s parole.
Murder of Harold Doorenbos
At approximately 2:00 a.m. on Aug. 12, 1991, Rodriguez, then-19 years old, and two other co-defendants entered an Anaheim gas station on Ball Road and State College Boulevard, with the intent to assault the gas station clerk on duty. Rodriguez and one of his co-defendants worked at the gas station and were angry with the clerk for complaining about them to their boss. The three defendants waited until customers had left the gas station and they were alone with 47-year-old gas station employee, Harold Doorenbos. The victim was a father of five children who worked two jobs to support his family.
The defendants took Doorenbos by surprise and brutally beat him. They stabbed him multiple times in the back and left side of his chest and struck him repeatedly in the head with a blunt object, smashing his head and teeth and leaving his face deformed. The three men left the murdered victim and fled the scene, taking money from the cash register and safe. They were questioned by Anaheim police and arrested eight days later.
Lack of Rehabilitation and Threat to Public Safety
Since his incarceration, Rodriguez has accumulated 25 prison rules violations, three of which he recently received since his last parole hearing in September 2007. Two of them were in April 2011 for battery on an inmate and fighting and he also battered an inmate in 2008. Rodriguez has also been disciplined for other major prison rules violations including inmate manufactured alcohol, battery on an inmate, failure to follow instructions, possession of a controlled substance, disobeying a direct order, and hiding out with the attempt to escape. The inmate continues to display a lack of rehabilitation and proves he cannot remain violence-free even when he is incarcerated and knows it will hinder his ability to be free.
Considering the inmate’s lack of rehabilitation and his ongoing major prison rules violations, the inmate poses a danger to the community and should not be released.
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