A man convicted of gunning down a man and his teenage nephew in an unincorporated area near El Cajon more than two decades ago was sentenced Tuesday to multiple terms of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Michael James Romero, 49, was found guilty by an El Cajon jury of the Jan. 21, 2003, murders of 30-year-old Patrick Greene and 17-year-old Brandon Vigil.
Agents with a regional fugitive task force arrested Michael James Romero of National City in April 2022 in connection with the slayings of Patrick Greene, 30, and 17-year-old Brandon Vigil on Jan. 21, 2003, according to the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department.
Shortly before 6 a.m. that day, deputies responding to reports of gunfire found the victims’ bodies lying face down alongside the roadway in the 2100 block of Willow Glen Drive in the Dehesa area, east of El Cajon.
Each had been shot repeatedly.
The case initially went cold, but Romero was arrested in 2022 after a friend of his – who was facing a potential prison sentence in an unrelated case – recorded a conversation in which Romero admitted to committing the murders.
Romero, however, testified during the trial that his admissions were false and that the killings were actually committed by another man, who died about a decade after the slayings.
On Tuesday, however, Romero received a life without parole term for each killing, plus an additional 50 years in prison.
City News Service contributed to this report.
