Repeat carjacker receives 45-year sentence

A 20-year-old man who carried out a string of carjackings, including one at the Alamo Quarry Market in which he shot a woman in the face, has been sentenced to 45 years in prison.

Julio Caesar Rivera II pleaded guilty to three counts of aggravated robbery stemming from carjackings he committed in the fall of 2021, when he was 18.

Under a plea bargain with the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office, Rivera faced a minimum sentence of five years and a maximum of 45.

On Friday, state District Court Judge Ron Rangel imposed the maximum. Rivera will have to serve at least half the 45-year term before becoming eligible for parole. He will receive credit for 619 days already served in the Bexar County jail.

The victim of the Quarry Market shooting, Alana Castaneda, was in the courtroom when Rangel passed sentence.

“As soon as they said it was 45 years, like, I just started crying because it’s not just for me. It’s for the other victims as well,” Castaneda told KSAT.

Rivera confronted Castaneda, then 27, just before 9 p.m. on Nov. 2, 2021, as she was putting groceries in her car in the parking lot of a Whole Foods Market at the Quarry. He pointed a Glock pistol in her face. Castaneda, a graphic designer, had self-defense training and used it to fight him off briefly.

Rivera pistol-whipped her and shot her in the face before fleeing, police said.

Castaneda stumbled back into the Whole Foods Market, blood streaming down her face. An employee applied pressure to her wounds to stanch the bleeding.

“If she had not have done that, I wouldn’t be here … today,” Castaneda told the San Antonio Express-News during an interview five weeks after the shooting. “She’s the sweet woman I owe my life to.”

Rivera