3 Gang Members Charged Guilty For Killing 19 Year Old Boy !!!!

In Loving Memory of Sean Thomas Gardhouse

Sean Thomas Gardhouse, a 19-year old man was beaten to death by three Corona- area gang members, for perceiving loyalty to rival group. Recently a six-man and six-women jury has found the three gang members guilty, which included Travis Daniel Westly, 26, Richard James Dugan, 27, and Jonathan Richard Morgan, 24, for second-degree murder and sentence-enhancing gang allegations for the June 23, 2006, fatal assault of Sean Thomas Gardhouse. The defendants, scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 12, face 25 years to life in prison.

 

On the night victim was attacked he and a friend had gone to a Jack in the Box in the 1100 block of Ontario Avenue in Corona to meet the victim’s girlfriend. Earlier that evening, Morgan and a friend of the defendants, Victor Sanchez, had a hostile exchange in the restaurant parking area with members of a group of Corona youths calling themselves the SoCal Riders, or SCR. Because Morgan and Sanchez were outnumbered, they backed out of the confrontation, according to Riverside County Deputy District Attorney John Aki. He said Morgan, who is a member of an Inland-area gang known as the El Cerrito Boys, or ECB, sought help from Westly and Dugan, members of Friends Stand United, or FSU, a nationally affiliated gang into hard rock and casual fistfighting. According to Aki, around 15 ECB and FSU members converged on the Jack in the Box, but by that time “the threat was gone,” because no SCR members remained. But the defendants were keyed up, spoiling for a fight, Aki said. According to trial testimony, Gardhouse had just parked his Chevy Silverado pickup outside the Jack in the Box and was chatting with friends when a group of about 10 young men, led by Sanchez, walked from the restaurant to Gardhouse’s truck, calling the victim over to talk. According to Gardhouse’s close friend, Robert “Robby” Lucero, who was sitting in the truck, Sanchez asked Gardhouse why he was associating with certain people, and Gardhouse denied any such association. Lucero said when he tried to come to his friend’s aid, Morgan attacked him. Westly confronted the victim at the doors of the restaurant, and according to Aki, the defendant threw a punch so hard it “fractured Sean’s temporal bone, probably rendering him unconscious.” Gardhouse collapsed onto the concrete sidewalk, striking his head and suffering severe blunt force trauma, according to the prosecution. He lingered in a coma nearly a week before dying.

“Mr. Dugan’s family is very sad,” the attorney said. “But they love and support their son 100 percent.”