Man sentenced to 20 years for fatally shooting soon-to-retire victim outside Avondale restaurant
A man has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for murdering a senior man who was about to retire in 2024, authorities announced Friday.
Roberto Trejo (AZDCRR photo)
(AZDCRR photo)
A man has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for murdering a senior man who was about to retire in 2024, authorities announced Friday.
Roberto Trejo was 20 when he murdered 66-year-old Frank Vitale in Avondale, according to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office.
Vitale was sitting in his car after eating lunch at a buffet near 99th Avenue and McDowell Road when Trejo approached him. Trejo pointed a handgun through the window without warning, shooting Vitale before fleeing the area, prosecutors said.
Police said there was no connection between the two and no apparent motive for the shooting.
Trejo was five months out of prison and on supervised probation when he murdered Vitale.
Vitale had arrived in Arizona two days before his murder. He was planning to retire and live with his sister in a Maricopa County home he had recently purchased.
Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell said no prison sentence could be long enough to make up for the pain Trejo caused.
“At 20 years old, he had the opportunity to improve his behavior but instead chose to do the unimaginable and take a life,” Mitchell said in the announcement. “Thanks to the work of homicide prosecutor Daniel Strange, this defendant will no longer be a threat to the community.”
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Comments
7 Comments
20yrs seems WAY lenient for such a cold-blooded and senseless murder ..
Nah, looks more like one of your own, especially with that Trump-like scowl in his booking photo. But thanks for being the first village idiot to make it political 👍
Doesn't one have to be a total, nonredeemable sociopath to walk up to someone they don't know and murder them for no apparent reason? And how did he get his hands on a gun being a convicted felon? Never mind on that last question, we can pretty much surmise and be correct.
With that menacing mug shot photo (reminiscent of a certain politician), he will get along just fine with the gangs in prison, heck, maybe even become one of their leaders before his time is done and come out all tatted up and looking for more crimes to commit. Or maybe, if society is a bit lucky, he won't live to serve out his sentence.