Jury deliberations will continue Monday in the trial of a Lancaster man accused of fatally shooting a Chula Vista resident in 1999 during a botched home-invasion robbery.
Joe Mora, 35, is charged with murder in the Nov. 28, 1999, killing of Sergio Morales.
Deputy District Attorney Andrea Freshwater told jurors in her opening statement that Mora talked to his girlfriend, Alicia Ayala, in 2012 after being questioned by Chula Vista police detectives. Freshwater said the defendant came home upset because detectives told him that a beanie found at the crime scene had his DNA on it.
“He said, ‘It was a home-invasion robbery that went wrong. I didn’t want to do it, but he kept coming at me,”’ Freshwater quoted Mora as telling Ayala.
Ayala called authorities nine months later and told them what Mora had allegedly told her.
No suspect was identified until 2009, when the DNA evidence came to light. Mora was arrested in September 2013 and charged with murder during an attempted home-invasion robbery and murder during an attempted residential burglary.
Authorities allege that on the evening of Nov. 28, 1999, Mora and a female companion showed up at the victim’s Paseo Burga residence and tried in vain to talk their way inside. When Morales attempted to shut the front door, a struggle ensued and the 54-year-old victim was beaten and fatally shot, police said.
Deputy Public Defender Juliana Humphrey told the jury in her opening statement that the prosecution wouldn’t be able to prove that Mora committed the murder. She urged jurors to question the credibility of Ayala and two other women in Mora’s past.
The defense attorney said the DNA found on the beanie was a mixture from a number of people.
Jurors began deliberating last Wednesday.
— City News Service
