| FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Date: March 21, 2022 |
PRESS RELEASE Kimberly Edds Public Information Officer Office: 714-347-8405, Cell: 714-504-1917 |
SANTA ANA, Calif. – A third-striker gang member parolee was found guilty today of the special circumstances murder of an innocent father of three on Father’s Day in a failed attack on a rival gang member.
Jose De Jesus Gomez-Ochoa, 36, Tustin, was charged with one felony count of special circumstances murder for criminal street gang purpose, one felony count of unlawful possession of a firearm, and sentencing enhancements for the personal discharge of a firearm causing death, criminal street gang activity, the personal use of a firearm. He has prior strike convictions for participation in a criminal street gang in 2011 and 2012, and criminal street gang member in possession of a firearm in 2012.
A jury found Gomez-Ochoa guilty today on all counts
He will be sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. His sentencing is scheduled for July 15, 2022.
“Criminal street gangs continue to force hardworking, honest people to live in fear,” said Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer. “A father should have spent his evening with his three children celebrating Father’s Day, but instead his children had to learn that their father had been shot to death because he ended up in between two rival gang members. An innocent man is dead, and he shouldn’t be. I have and will continue to charge gang enhancements and firearms enhancements to send a strong message to gang members that violence won’t be tolerated and an even stronger message to the hardworking families who have to live in gang neighborhoods: We are doing whatever we can to protect you and your loved ones.”
Gomez-Ochoa was a parolee and was being a member of a criminal street gang at the time of the murder when he shot and killed 52-year-old Eliu Armando Gramajo who was working at his food truck.
On June 19, 2016, at approximately 7:10 p.m., Gomez-Ochoa was in the 1700 block of South Evergreen Street in Santa Ana. A rival criminal street gang member was buying something from a parked food truck, which belonged to Gramajo. Gomez-Ochoa saw the rival gang member from a distance and fired his gun five times at that rival gang member. The shot missed his intended target and instead hit Gramajo, an innocent bystander and husband and father of three. Gomez-Ochoa fled the scene.
Gramajo, who was shot in the upper chest, died at the hospital.
The Santa Ana Police Department investigated arrested Gomez-Ochoa at his home the day after the shooting.
Senior Deputy District Attorney Janine Madera of the Homicide Unit is prosecuting this case.
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