Man who pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter to be sentenced

After pleading guilty to voluntary manslaughter in November, Salvador Garcia-vaca will appear in a Colusa courtroom Wednesday for sentencing.

Garcia-vaca, accused of murdering Williams native Karen Garcia in January 2018, also admitted to the kidnapping and robbery of the victim following an altercation, in addition to a weapons enhancement charge.

He will also be sentenced for a felony corporal injury charge stemming from an incident in

Dec. 2017, just weeks before Karen Garcia was murdered. He pleaded guilty to that in November as well.

Garcia-vaca originally pleaded not guilty in September 2019 to one count of murder with special circumstances for lying in wait as well as a battery charge stemming from the other incident, but later changed his plea after admitting that he killed Garcia in a fit of spontaneous rage and jealousy.

Garcia’s body was discovered in a car parked in a Woodland shopping center parking lot in January 2018, one week after she went missing. An autopsy later determined she had died from blunt force trauma.

Garcia-vaca, the victim’s exboyfriend and father of her child, was questioned by police during the week Garcia was missing. Soon after, Garcia-vaca fled. Around that time, police obtained a search warrant to search the home that Garcia-vaca had shared with the victim and found a substantial amount of blood in a bedroom.

Authorities believed Garcia-vaca had gone to Mexico after a stolen Toyota van that he was believed to be driving was located near the U.s.-mexico border in October 2018.

Prior to fleeing, authorities learned Garcia-vaca and the victim had fought because she had made the decision to move out of the apartment they shared and was seeing another person. Garcia-vaca was arrested in August 2019 by United States marshals in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, and extradited back to the Colusa County Jail, where he has remained in custody.

According to a release, the Colusa County District Attorney’s Office expects Garcia-vaca will receive 25 years in prison in addition to the year and a half he has already spent in custody.

The hearing is scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. in Department

Two of the Colusa County Superior Courthouse Annex, 532 Oak Street, Colusa.