SOMERSET, Calif.—A marijuana field worker who shot and killed a Northern California sheriff’s deputy was convicted Friday of second-degree murder.
Juan Carlos Vasquez-Orozco, 22, also was found guilty of assault with a gun on three other deputies. He could face life in prison when he is sentenced in May.
Prosecutors say Vasquez-Orozco killed El Dorado County sheriff’s Deputy Brian Ishmael in October 2019. Ishmael, 37, had answered a 911 call from the owner of land in rural Somerset about people possibly stealing plants at a marijuana garden, prosecutors said.
Ross didn’t tell authorities that Vasquez-Orozco and another man, both Mexican citizens, were tending the garden on his land and he worried that they would take the plants without the men who hired them paying
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