KILLER GETS 102 YEARS FOR 2013 DEATH
A 27-year-old gang member from Garden Grove was sentenced to 102 years to life in prison Friday for three shootings, including the murder of a mother whose body was dumped in Newport Beach.
Irvin Tellez shot and killed 28-year-old Nancy Hammour while they rode in a car early Labor Day 2013. With help from the car’s driver, Tellez threw her body from a bridge spanning Newport Harbor, where it was found later that day.
Before Orange County Superior Court Judge John Conley handed down Tellez’s sentence Friday, Hammour’s sister, Yara Morales, read a statement reminding Tellez that he had stolen a mother from two young boys.
“Do you know what it is like to have Nancy’s oldest son text me or call me in the middle of the night crying, missing his mom, asking me, ‘Why her? Why did she have to leave me?’” Morales said through tears.
Prosecutors say Tellez and another gang member, Jaime Rocha, were with Hammour in her apartment smoking methamphetamine before the violence began.
The three left in a rented car driven by Rocha. While on a Santa Ana street, Tellez spoke to another woman through a car window. The woman mentioned a rival gang, and Tellez shot her in the face. That woman “miraculously survived,” Conley said at the sentencing.
On the 55 Freeway, Tellez turned the gun on Hammour because she had begun yelling at him for shooting the woman, said Senior Deputy Dist. Atty. Jim Mendelson.
In September, a jury convicted Tellez of first-degree murder, attempted murder and street terrorism. Jurors also found him guilty of assault with a semiautomatic firearm for an earlier incident in which he shot a man in a leg.
Rocha pleaded guilty to his part in Hammour’s killing and was sentenced last month to 16 years in prison. As part of a deal with prosecutors, he testified against Tellez.
In court Friday, Morales said Hammour had gone down a dark path after their father died, but when Hammour’s second son was born, she vowed to turn her life around.
That was four months before the shooting.
The two boys are being raised by relatives, Morales said.
She ended her statement by reading a Facebook post written by Hammour’s older son, now 16.
“I can’t stop crying,” he wrote. “I miss you, Mom.”
“I don’t know how I’m going to explain it to my baby brother.”