Two Montebello men were sentenced Friday for killing 29-year-old Downey police officer Ricardo Galvez in the station’s parking lot in 2015, officials said.
Steven Knott, 23, was sentenced to 50 years to life in state prison and his brother Jeremy Anthony Alvarez, 26, was sentenced to 30 years to life in prison, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said in a news release.
In March, Knott pleaded guilty to one count each of first-degree murder and attempted robbery with the personal use of a firearm for the killing of Galvez. Alvarez pleaded guilty to one count each of second-degree murder and attempted robbery for the officer’s murder.
Galvez, a former U.S. Marine who served two tours of duty in Iraq and a five-year veteran of the Downey Police Department, was dressed in plain clothes after working with the department’s K-9 team on Nov. 18, 2015, when he was fatally shot as he sat in his personal car in the police station parking lot, officials said.
“It looks like these guys were out looking for somebody to rob,” said Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Lt. John Corina the day after the shooting.
At the time, investigators said they did not believe the two men, and Abel Diaz who was with them, knew they were near the police station or that Galvez was an officer.
Diaz, who was 16 years old at the time of the shooting, was also charged in the case. But in a 2018 deal brokered with prosecutors, he admitted to his role in the officer’s killing in juvenile court and was set to be released from detention by age 25. As part of the deal, prosecutors dropped their quest to move his case to adult court, where he would have faced a maximum sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Knott and Alvarez also admitted to an attempted murder in Montebello in October 2015, a takeover robbery of two victims at a Bellflower cell phone store, and a street robbery in Paramount shortly before Galvez’s murder.
Knott also was convicted of shooting at a dwelling in South Gate in Sept. 2015.
The pair admitted multiple firearms enhancements and allegations that the crimes were committed in association with members of a criminal street gang, according to the DA’s Office.