UPDATE: We now know Ernesto Hernandez Avalos has been convicted, although we still don't know what the deal is with his face. Details (and lack thereof) below . . .
UPDATE: Ernesto Hernandez Avalos was convicted by a jury in a Santa Ana courtroom of murdering his boss by
repeatedly hitting him in the back of the head with a shovel and a
pickax in the backyard of an Irvine home where they were working on a
landscaping job.
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The 27-year-old day laborer from Santa Ana had worked with landscaper Woo Sung Park, 45, a few times before the morning of Jan. 29, 2007. They were working in the back yard of a residence on Woods Trail in Irvine around 11:30 a.m. when Park turned his back after complaining about Avalos' work.
The jury found the day laborer got angry at the critique and hit his boss in the back of the head with a shovel, knocking the victim to the ground.
As another worker who witnessed the incident ran to find someone to call 9-1-1, Avalos hit Park six or seven times with the shovel, the jury confirmed.
Irvine Police officers quickly arrived and ordered Avalos to drop the shovel, which he did. But then, in front of the officers, Avalos grabbed a pickax
and hit Park again with the butt of it.
Cops had to use “non-lethal force” to subdue the laborer.
He was convicted of one felony count of murder with a sentencing enhancement for the personal use of a deadly weapon.
At his April 30 sentencing, Avalos faces a maximum sentence of 26 years to life in state prison.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.