A man who stabbed his mother’s boyfriend to death during a fight at the victim’s Spring Valley home a year ago was sentenced Tuesday to 12 years in state prison.

Thomas Dwayne Guss III, 25, pleaded guilty in March to voluntary manslaughter with the use of a knife.

San Diego Superior Court in El Cajon.
San Diego Superior Court in El Cajon.

Deputies responding to a report of a domestic disturbance in the 8600 block of Taylor Street in Spring Valley found the mortally wounded victim shortly before 10 p.m. on April 16, 2013.

Paramedics took Irvin Harris Jr., 40, to Scripps Mercy Hospital in Hillcrest, where he died a short time later. Guss fled before deputies arrived but was arrested near the scene the next morning, according to San Diego County sheriff’s homicide Lt. Glenn Giannantonio.

Deputy District Attorney Cally Bright said Guss told authorities he remembered most of what happened that night, except the point where Harris was stabbed. Bright said the victim was stabbed twice, in the heart and the liver.

The reason for the dispute between the two men remains unclear.

– City News Service