A 44-year-old who beat and strangled his former girlfriend after she asked for money to care for their 8-year-old daughter was convicted last week.
Arturo Tapia Salazar pleaded guilty Thursday to second degree murder and was sentenced to 15 years to life in state prison.
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Family members found
Maria Cristina Ramirez-Diaz on the garage floor of an apartment in the 13000 block of
Fairview Avenue in Garden Grove around 4:30 p.m. on Oct. 15, 2010. Salazar was still home when Garden Grove Police officers arrived. He was arrested at the scene.
Salazar, who had previously moved out of the apartment and relocated to Santa Ana, had a prior romantic relationship with Ramirez, who bore him an
8-year-old daughter. The mother demanded cash to help raise her when Salazar beat and strangled the woman to death.
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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.