LOS ANGELES, CA — A man who owned a marjiuana dispensary and the business’ manager were sentenced Thursday to 25 years to life in prison for murdering a community college student whose remains were found in a remote area of the Mojave Desert nearly two months after he went missing in South Los Angeles.
Superior Court Judge Mark Hanasono tacked on an additional one-year sentence for dispensary owner Weijia Peng in connection with an allegation stemming from his use of a syringe filled with a deadly dose of ketamine during the Sept. 22, 2020, attack on 21-year-old Juan Carlos Hernandez.
Peng, 34, of Alhambra, and co-defendant Ethan Kedar Astaphan, 30, of San Gabriel, were convicted Feb. 26 of first-degree murder for the slaying of Hernandez, who was a student at El Camino College in Torrance.
Deputy District Attorney Habib Balian said the two men suspected that Hernandez was stealing from the dispensary where he worked, although law enforcement found no proof to back up the allegation made in messages that Peng and Astaphan had written each other in the days before the young man’s killing.
A forensic expert was able to recover images that were deleted from a DVR containing security video