Road rage shooter Torrez given 16 years in prison
Last-minute deal made to allow plea to second-degree murder
Tony Torrez was sentenced Thursday to 16 years in prison in the fatal shooting of 4-year-old Lilly Garcia, who was buckled into the back seat of her father’s truck when Torrez fired shots during a road rage altercation with her father.
Torrez entered his plea before Judge Charles Brown to second-degree murder in a last-minute deal with prosecutors. The hearing culminated the high-profile case on the same day jury selection was scheduled to begin.
Torrez was driving a Toyota
Camry on westbound Interstate
40 when he encountered Lilly’s father, Alan Garcia, who was driving a red pickup truck. As they drove, the two engaged in some sort of altercation, and “exchanged words,” police said, before Torrez opened fire.
“A bullet was fired from Mr. Torrez’s gun into the truck that was being driven by Alan Garcia,” prosecutor Elisa Dimas said. “That bullet went into the skull of Lilly Garcia, killing her.”
Torrez took an Alford plea, which lets a defendant assert his innocence, while recognizing that prosecutors have sufficient evidence to support a conviction.
But Torrez, 33, addressed the court briefly, apologizing to the Garcia family and the community as a whole. He said he prays every night for the child’s family and for their forgiveness.
“I’m sorry for taking the life of Lilly,” he said. “That was never my intention. I had no intent of hurting anybody that day.”
But he also said that at the time of the incident that he thought he was about to become the victim. He said that as he engaged in the altercation, he was thinking of a friend who was ejected from her own vehicle as a result of a road rage incident. His attorney, Stephen Taylor, said that Torrez’s friend was killed when her vehicle rolled over.
“That came into his mind at the moment in which he felt like Alan was trying to run him off the road,” Taylor said. He said that Torrez was in fear for his life.
“He did make a quick decision,” Taylor said. “Who are we to judge in these moments when you feel like you’re in fear for your life?”
Some community members, including Torrez’s attorneys, have suggested that Alan Garcia also should have been charged in his daughter’s death. Taylor reiterated that in a statement to members of the news media after the hearing.
“There’s evidence from a neutral eyewitness as well as (Garcia’s) own son, who was in that vehicle that day, saying he played a part in the actions that led to this terrible tragedy,” Taylor said.
But Albuquerque police maintain that Lilly’s father didn’t commit a crime.
“We looked at the totality of the circumstances, as we do in all cases, and there is no evidence that Lilly Garcia’s father committed child abuse related to the incident,” Celina Espinoza, a police spokeswoman, said last week.
Thursday’s plea and sentencing hearing took place in a courtroom packed with family, friends, community members and media. Alan Garcia sat beside a large image of his smiling daughter dressed in pink. Her mother, Veronica Rael-Garcia, held a framed photograph as she cried quietly through much of the hearing. She cradled her head in her hands as Dimas said that medical investigators determined during the autopsy that the bullet that hit Lilly resulted in her immediate unconciousness, leaving her unable to feel any pain.
Alan Garcia spoke of the future moments — like walking Lilly down the aisle at her wedding — that he will never get to experience.
Regarding that tragic day, he said: “If I would have known what I know now about that day, I wouldn’t have swerved.”
Rael-Garcia described an unending physical pain in her stomach and chest since Lilly died. She said she has struggled to help her 8-year-old son cope with his sister’s death.
“I could have lost my whole family that day,” she said, sobbing, “because he thought it was OK to pull out a gun and shoot multiple times into a vehicle.”
District Attorney Kari Brandenburg said she felt the plea agreement served justice, and would save taxpayers the cost of a lengthy trial.
“Of course,” she said, “nothing can ever relieve the pain Lilly’s family has endured or the anger and shock felt by the entire community.”