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The last of the four people to be tried in the fatal beating of a University of Southern California student was found guilty of first-degree murder and other charges Wednesday.
Jurors handed down the verdict after about two hours of deliberation, convicting 21-year-old Alberto Ochoa of murder, second-degree robbery, attempted second-degree robbery and assault with a deadly weapon. He will be sentenced on March 8.
The other three suspects — Andrew Garcia, Alejandra Guerrero and Jonathan Del Carmen — have all been convicted in the deadly attack, with Garcia and Guerrero both being sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
According to prosecutors, 24-year-old USC engineering student Xinran Ji was walking home from a study group around 1 a.m. on July 24, 2014 when he was attacked by four assailants, including Ochoa.
They beat Ji with a metal baseball bat and wrench in a robbery attempt gone awry, according to prosecutors, leaving the 24-year-old to escape to his apartment near campus.
Ochoa is accused of hitting the victim with a bat and then running away, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office stated in a news release.
Ji left behind a trail of blood and was found dead by his roommate hours later.
Prosecutors have alleged the killers targeted Ji because he is Chinese and had assumed he had money, according to the Los Angeles Times.
With the final guilty verdict handed down in Ji’s death, Deputy District Attorney John McKinnney told reporters outside the courtroom Wednesday that Ji’s family in China came to Los Angeles multiple times for the ongoing trials in their son’s murder.
“The greatest satisfaction though is for whatever closure and peace there is for Ji’s family back in China,” McKinney said.
“They are very grateful that the judicial system of our country is able to give them the justice that they’ve been waiting for, very patiently,” said Rose Tsai, attorney for the Ji family.
Meanwhile, McKinney said Ochoa has never “expressed any real remorse for what he did.”
The slain student’s family appeared at a sentencing hearing for Garcia in August 2017. The first of the killers convicted, Garcia was accused of repeatedly striking Ji with a bat as he chased him down. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Guerrero was also sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole while Del Carmen pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 15 years to life, according to the DA’s office.
“He was our only child and we lost him,” Ji’s father said through the translator at Garcia’s sentencing hearing in 2017. “From that day, we lost the sunshine of our lives.”
Ochoa was also convicted alongside Garcia and Guerrero for robbing a woman and man near Dockweiler Beach, according to prosecutors.
