City News Service
INDIO, Calif. (KESQ) – A parolee who gunned down a man more than a decade ago for crashing into his SUV on an Indio street was convicted today of first-degree murder and other offenses.
An Indio jury deliberated less than a day before finding James “Chip” Milton Nathaniel, 39, of Beaumont, guilty of the 2015 slaying of 35-year-old Apolonio Carranza.
Along with murder, the jury convicted Nathaniel of being a felon in possession of a firearm, witness intimidation, spousal abuse and sentence-enhancing gun and great bodily injury allegations.
Riverside County Superior Court Judge Otis Sterling scheduled a bench trial Friday to determine whether the defendant’s prior strikes should be factored into his conviction. After that matter is disposed, a formal sentencing hearing will be scheduled at the Larson Justice Center in Indio.
Nathaniel is being held without bail at the Benoit Detention Center.
“He used a semiautomatic firearm, firing not one, not two, not three, but 12 rounds,” Deputy District Attorney Paul Sorensen told jurors at the outset of the trial. “That’s why we’re here — because the defendant shot Mr. Carranza 12 times.”
Sorensen recalled how Nathaniel and his wife, Ernestia, went to visit a friend at 43077 Kenya Drive shortly after midnight on April 19, 2015, and that not long afterward Carranza arrived at the location.
One of the prosecution’s initial witnesses, Ruby Coleman, testified that Nathaniel was familiar to her because of her relationship with his cousin, but she didn’t know Carranza, whom she said had been at the property earlier the previous day.
According to the Indio Police Department, witnesses told officers at the time that an argument erupted between Nathaniel and Carranza for reasons not altogether clear.
A police arrest warrant declaration quoted one person as saying that, during the confrontation, Carranza challenged Nathaniel to race for the “pink slips” to their respective SUVs, then he rammed Nathaniel’s Porsche Cayenne.
The enraged defendant pulled a handgun and opened fire on the victim as he sat behind the wheel of his Nissan Murano, the affidavit said.
“A barrage of shots” was fired into the Nissan, Sorensen told the jury.
The victim died at the scene.
Nathaniel then got into his SUV and drove away. Witnesses called 911, and patrol officers arrived within 10 minutes. The defendant’s wife later told investigators he instructed her “not to say anything,” according to the prosecutor. When she questioned him, he pushed her into a wall.
The defendant’s identity was publicized four days after the shooting. He was taken into custody without incident in San Bernardino on May 21, 2015.
“This case is about something that happened 11 years ago. It’s about how Mr. Carranza was gunned down,” Sorensen said.
The People v. Nathaniel ranks among the county court system’s oldest unresolved murder cases. It had been plagued by repeated delays, attributable to the defendant’s changes in counsel, ongoing requests for dismissals, hearings to access law enforcement officers’ confidential records and some other matters not specified in court records going back to his arrest.
Nathaniel had been released from prison in the early spring of 2014 after completing a sentence stemming from a 2005 attack in which a motorist was shot in Indio, according to court records.
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