Plea deal in Lilly’s death
Gunman accused of killing 4-year-old girl in road rage incident is expected to enter plea agreement today
The man accused of fatally shooting 4-year-old Lilly Garcia during a road rage incident in October 2015 is expected to take a plea deal this morning, according to his attorneys.
The deal offered by prosecutors will see Tony Torrez plead to second-degree murder, Torrez’s defense attorney Stephen Taylor said. He will face a 16-year prison sentence.
Taylor said Torrez will take an Alford plea, which allows a defendant to maintain innocence while acknowledging that prosecutors have evidence to support a conviction.
Jury selection in his trial on first-degree murder and lesser charges was scheduled to begin today, with a lengthy trial slated to start Monday.
Prosecutor Elisa Dimas said Wednesday she wasn’t able to comment on the agreement.
Taylor said that it is still possible Torrez will change his mind, though he said it was “highly likely” that Torrez will accept the deal. He is set to appear before Judge Charles Brown at 8:30 a.m..
“We feel like it’s in his best interest to enter into this deal,” Taylor said. “There’s always the possibility he could be found guilty of first-degree murder.”
“It’s certainty versus uncertainty,” defense attorney Todd Farkas added.
Police said Torrez, driving a red sedan, and Alan Garcia, in a red truck, engaged in some sort of high-speed altercation as they traveled west on Interstate 40. He said they “exchanged words” before Torrez fired shots, striking Lilly Garcia, who was riding in the backseat of her father’s truck.
Garcia told police the car cut across traffic, forcing him out of his lane. But Jonell Tafoya, who said she watched the altercation, told another story.
“(The red car) was just trying to get around the red truck and the red truck was making it a point to stay in front of him,” she said in a pre-trial interview with Farkas and Taylor.
She said she was surprised to learn the girl was a passenger in the truck, because it had been driving so erratically.
Taylor and Farkas planned to argue at trial that Torrez fired shots in self-defense.
“What he was in fear of,” Taylor explained in an interview Wednesday, “was the truck shoving him into the wall or pushing
him off the road.”
Torrez, 33, will get credit for the year he has already spent in custody awaiting trial; he will be eligible to earn 85 percent good time if he accepts the agreement, Taylor said.
If convicted of all the charges he was set to be tried on, Torrez faced a mandatory 30-year life sentence, plus 29 years.
He previously rejected a deal in which he would have pleaded guilty or no contest to seconddegree murder and three more felony charges. That deal called for a sentence of between five and 25 years, Dimas said during a hearing Monday.