Wednesday, August 12, 2026
Page 3
Court of Appeal:
Fatal Fall Trying to Stop Car Theft Supports Murder Charge
Opinion Says Evidence That Van Swerved Before Victim Tumbled From Vehicle Is Sufficient to Establish Force to Prove Carjacking Offense That Underpins Felony Murder Conviction
By a MetNews Staff Writer
Div. Three of the Fourth District Court of Appeal yesterday upheld a felony murder conviction in a case in which a man was run over and killed after he fell trying to get into the passenger side of his moving van while the defendant was in process of stealing it.
At issue is whether the theft qualifies as a carjacking for purposes of Penal Code §189, which lists the offenses that may underpin a felony murder conviction. Carjacking is defined in §215, which specifies:
“ ‘Carjacking’ is the felonious taking of a motor vehicle in the possession of another, from his or her person or immediate presence…, against his or her will and with the intent to either permanently or temporarily deprive the person…of his or her possession, accomplished by means of force or fear.”
Yesterday’s unpublished opinion, authored by Justice Martha K. Gooding and joined in by Acting Presiding Justice Thomas A. Delaney and Orange Superior Court Judge Walter P. Schwarm, sitting by assignment, rejects the defendant’s assertion that prosecutors failed to establish that he used force or fear in the taking.
Idling Van
The question arose after Jose Berrelleza arrived at his parents’ home in Anaheim to retrieve his work van, which he stored at the location, at approximately 6 a.m. on Sept. 22, 2020. He started the car and left it idling as he spoke to his father and his brother-in-law a few feet away from the vehicle.
After his brother-in-law alerted him that a man had gotten into the driver’s seat of the van, Berrelleza gave chase and was able to grab onto the front passenger door as the driver, later identified as Omar Sanchez, sped up. Berrelleza lost his grip, fell to the street, and was run over by the moving vehicle.
Sanchez drove off and was arrested later that day.
At the 2024 trial relating to the incident, the victim’s father and brother-in-law testified that Sanchez swerved as the victim was precariously hanging on to the vehicle door, and an investigator indicated that there were curvature marks in the street consistent with their story. Footage from home surveillance cameras, which were played for the jury, did not show erratic driving but also failed to capture the moment Berrelleza fell from the van.
A jury found him guilty of first-degree felony murder on the theory that he killed Berrelleza during the commission of a carjacking, and Orange Superior Court Judge Michael Cassidy sentenced him to 25 years to life in prison on Dec. 13, 2024.
Transformation of Crime
Gooding noted that what started as a simple theft may be transformed into a robbery or a carjacking if the suspect resorts to the use of force or fear to retain possession once confronted about the crime. She wrote:
“However, courts have drawn a distinction between robbery and carjacking when it comes to the amount of force needed to satisfy the force or fear requirement.”
She pointed to the 2017 opinion by this district’s Div. Eight in People v. Lopez and the case of People v. Hudson, decided a few months later by the First District’s Div. Five, each of which held that, unlike robbery, carjacking does not require the use of more force than is necessary to complete the taking in order to transform what started a simple theft into a more serious offense.
The defendant urged the panel to part ways with those decisions, arguing that they were wrongly decided because they effectively read the force-or-fear element out of §215. He invited the court to instead hold that carjacking, like robbery, requires a level of force that exceeds the amount necessary to carry off the property.
Intrinsic Dangers
Declining the invitation, the justice remarked:
“Our response is twofold. First, we believe the reasoning in Lopez and Hudson is sound, considering the intrinsic dangers associated with unlawfully taking a motor vehicle from another person. Indeed, the case at hand illustrates the danger involved when a defendant resists a victim’s efforts to regain possession of his vehicle by continuing to drive away with the vehicle.”
She continued:
“Second, even if we were to require proof Sanchez used more force than was inherent in the act of driving away with Berrelleza’s van, the record contains substantial evidence of this. [Witnesses] testified Sanchez swerved the van before Berrelleza fell to his death, and the curvature marks found in the street corroborated their testimony.”
Rejecting the contention that the surveillance footage undermined the testimony, she wrote:
“[T]he videos were taken from angles that were different than the angle from which the eyewitnesses saw the incident. [The witnesses] had an up-close view of things and were in the midst of the action as the incident unfolded. Because they were in a unique position to see what was going on and how events transpired, the jury was entitled to accept their testimony as credible.”
The case is People v. Sanchez, G065004.
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