Carson GI gets 12 years in double murder case - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Carson GI gets 12 years in double murder case

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — A Fort Carson soldier was sentenced Friday to 12 years in prison for being an accessory to a double homicide and attempted murder in Colorado Springs.

Iraq war veteran Rodolfo Torres-Gandarilla had pleaded guilty to the charges. He will testify in the August trial of the accused gunman, Jomar Falu-Vives, with whom he served in Baghdad.

Falu-Vives is accused of firing an AK-47 from a truck to kill Cesar Ramirez Ibanez and Amairany Cervantes in Colorado Springs on June 6. Torres-Gandarilla was in Falu-Vives’ truck at the time.

Falu-Vives also is accused of wounding another Fort Carson soldier, Capt. Zachary Szody, in a drive-by shooting on May 26. Torres-Gandarilla was with Falu-Vives in that incident.

Police have said there was no apparent motive for Ibanez and Cervantes’ killing. They haven’t publicly discussed a motive in Szody’s wounding.

Torres-Gandarilla, 21, experienced fierce combat during a 15-month deployment in Iraq and returned home months before the shootings.

4th Judicial District Judge Thomas Kennedy recognized Torres-Gandarilla’s service but said his involvement in the slayings — and his failure to report Szody’s shooting immediately — “disgraced the uniform you wore.”

Kennedy called the random shootings of Ibanez and Cervantes, who were gunned down as they posted signs for a garage sale, the “most senseless and outrageous” crime he’d seen on the bench.

“Your silence caused to some degree the deaths of two young people,” Kennedy said.

Falu-Vives, 24, and Torres-Gandarilla served in the 2nd Brigade Combat Team of the 2nd Infantry Division.

Soldiers from their unit were convicted in the slayings of two fellow soldiers in 2007. Another is charged in the October 2008 rape and murder of a 19-year-old Colorado Springs woman.

A total of six brigade members have been suspects in homicides over 18 months before the unit was deployed to Afghanistan in January. The Army has said it is looking for common threads in the incidents.