Jose Luis Gutierrez-Rosales sentenced for killing co-worker – A 50-year-old man in California may spend the rest of his life behind bars for brutally bludgeoning his co-worker of three years to death after being teased and bullied over rumors that the victim was sleeping with his ex-girlfriend. Kern County Superior Court Judge John Lua on Tuesday ordered Jose Luis Gutierrez-Rosales to serve a sentence of 16 years to life in prison for beating 56-year-old Hector Javier Castaneda Vasquez to death with a metal pipe last year, prosecutors confirmed in an email to Law&Crime.
Jose Luis Gutierrez-Rosales (Kern County District Attorney’s Office)Jose Luis Gutierrez-Rosales sentenced for killing co-worker
A jury last month found Gutierrez-Rosales guilty of one count of second-degree murder in Vasquez’s death. Jurors also agreed with a sentencing enhancement that the murder was committed with the use of a deadly weapon.
“Workplace harassment in all forms should be discouraged, but it is no excuse for the brutal beating and murder of another human being,” Kern County District Attorney Cynthia Zimmer said following the verdict. “Anyone who is so quick to kill based on so little provocation proves themself to be an unacceptable threat to public safety. Murder charges are appropriate when mere rumors and innuendo are countered with deadly and brutally violent acts.”
Deputies with the sheriff’s department at about 10:30 a.m. on April 18, 2022, responded to a farming company equipment yard on Di Gorgio Road in reference to a report of an assault with a deadly weapon, the DA’s office said in a press release.
Upon arriving at the scene, first responders immediately located the victim — later identified as Vasquez — “lying on his back in the dirt with massive injuries to his face and head.” Emergency medical personnel reached the site a short while later and declared Vasquez dead on the scene.
Witnesses told investigators that Vasquez and Gutierrez-Rosales had been co-workers for about three years prior to the attack.
