Jose Luis Gutierrez-Rosales (Kern County District Attorney's Office)
A 50-year-old man in California may spend the rest of his life behind bars for brutally bludgeoning his co-worker of three years to death after being teased and bullied over rumors that the victim was sleeping with his ex-girlfriend. Kern County Superior Court Judge John Lua on Tuesday ordered Jose Luis Gutierrez-Rosales to serve a sentence of 16 years to life in prison for beating 56-year-old Hector Javier Castaneda Vasquez to death with a metal pipe last year, prosecutors confirmed in an email to Law&Crime.
A jury last month found Gutierrez-Rosales guilty of one count of second-degree murder in Vasquez's death. Jurors also agreed with a sentencing enhancement that the murder was committed with the use of a deadly weapon.
"Workplace harassment in all forms should be discouraged, but it is no excuse for the brutal beating and murder of another human being," Kern County District Attorney Cynthia Zimmer said following the verdict. "Anyone who is so quick to kill based on so little provocation proves themself to be an unacceptable threat to public safety. Murder charges are appropriate when mere rumors and innuendo are countered with deadly and brutally violent acts."
Deputies with the sheriff's department at about 10:30 a.m. on April 18, 2022, responded to a farming company equipment yard on Di Gorgio Road in reference to a report of an assault with a deadly weapon, the DA's office said in a press release.
Upon arriving at the scene, first responders immediately located the victim — later identified as Vasquez — "lying on his back in the dirt with massive injuries to his face and head." Emergency medical personnel reached the site a short while later and declared Vasquez dead on the scene.
Witnesses told investigators that Vasquez and Gutierrez-Rosales had been co-workers for about three years prior to the attack.
"After a morning break, Gutierrez-Rosales picked up a heavy metal pipe and began bashing Vasquez in the head," prosecutors wrote in a press release. "When Vasquez was on his back, witnesses saw Gutierrez-Rosales hovering over him, repeatedly pummeling Vasquez in the face. Ultimately, Hector Castaneda Vasquez succumbed to his injuries and was killed by the sustained infliction of blunt force trauma delivered by Gutierrez-Rosales."
Following the gruesome attack, Gutierrez-Rosales fled the scene and wasn't picked up by law enforcement for 10 days. However, he claimed he knew his arrest was inevitable and he wasn't trying to evade capture, telling investigators that if he wanted to escape, he would have gone to Mexico.
"I'm going to own up to it like a man," he allegedly said.
According to authorities, Gutierrez-Rosales said that after killing Vasquez, he asked God for forgiveness, cut himself with a blade, and buried his cellphone near a grape vineyard after the device died.
Gutierrez-Rosales told police that his co-workers had "teased him" because of "rumors relating to one of Gutierrez-Rosales' prior relationships." Gutierrez-Rosales claimed that the humiliation was too much and that it led him to get the pipe and strike the victim.
"They provoked all of this," he said, according to authorities. "We were there picking up the pipes. I ate about two tacos, and I felt my body like strange, and then all of a sudden, I grabbed the pipe, and I just started going at him."
He said he told Vasquez, "This is for getting involved with my family," according to authorities.
A woman interviewed by authorities told detectives that she had dated Gutierrez-Rosales for about three months, but said they had split up several weeks prior to him attacking Vasquez, according to a report from Bakersfield NBC affiliate KGET-TV. The woman reportedly also noted that Gutierrez-Rosales had "anger issues."