Jill StewartRobert Canizalez and Martin Morones murdered Dora Groce and her two children in a horrific car blaze like a terror scene from Terminator, and California's 2nd District Court of Appeal yesterday denied their absurd attempt to undo their convictions.
A lower court had already decided in 2009 that these two selfish, out-of-control, street racers — two arrogant guys who never gave a rip who they endangered — drove Dora Groce and her kids to a fiery end.
Why don't killers like Morones and Canizalez understand that they're killers?
Morones and Canizalez burned to death three innocent people on Oct. 8, 2007. Morones, with his moronic driving, smashed his Honda into Groce's Nissan Altima as he and Canizalez sped north on Parkway Drive in El Monte.
Then his idiot pal, Canizalez, broadsided Groce's Altima. They shoved the Altima right into a parked truck, and it quickly exploded.
Stephen Groce lost his wife Dora and two children.
This loving, 40-year-old mother and her son Robert, 8 and daughter Catherine, 4, who were headed for the dentist or doctor, never had a chance during the insanity and violence of that day.
The mom died on impact, but the Los Angeles County Coroner found that, terribly, the two young children burned to death.
According to City News Service, the appellate panel yesterday, in a 50-page denial of the two mens' effort to toss out the murder convictions for lack of evidence, described that harrowing crash this way:
“Appellants drove nearly 90 miles per hour on a 30-mile-per-hour,
residential street, ran through a stop sign that was a block from their home and slammed into a car containing a mother and her two young children, who were incinerated inside.
After the accident, appellants' callous indifference to their victims had to have made an indelible impression on the jury,'' Associate Justice Judith Ashmann-Gerst wrote on behalf of the panel.
If a street racer has ever frightened you on a Los Angeles freeway or arterial, rocketing past your own car at 90 or 100 mph, think about these two guys: They had modified their Mustang and Honda to regularly engage in races that put others at great risk.
In fact, Canizalez and Morones may have ripped through traffic one night next to your car, just missing you and your family or friends.
The killer street race in 2007, Judge Ashmann-Gerst wrote, “was not an isolated, spur-of-the-moment instance of poor judgment.”
Captured in Mexico.
Canizalez, 19 at the time, was arrested that night. But Morones, then 21, fled to Mexico. He was recognized in Mexico by Federales and the U.S. Marshals Service brought him back to California.
The pair continued to behave like guilty men, with Canizalez tampering with a witness — and getting extra time in prison for doing that.
Oh, and after the crash, these two losers tried to hide the Honda by getting some friends to help push it into a nearby mobile home park. Right after three people died.
Canizalez got 48 years to life and Morones got 45 years to life. As reported here by Chris Blatchford of FOX-11.
The father who lost his entire family, Stephen Groce, filed a $100 million lawsuit against the two men and car manufacturer Nissan, but as noted by CaliforniaInjuryBlog.com, it's tough to know if he will ever be fiscally compensated.
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