SOLEDAD — Salinas Valley State Prison inmate Jaime Demicio Romero, 32, was sentenced to serve a term of 45 years to life in prison, after being convicted of second-degree murder, announced Monterey County District Attorney’s Office on April 24.
Romero was also convicted of personally using a deadly or dangerous weapon to commit the crime.
Judge Stephanie Hulsey, who presided over the trial, found that Romero he had previously been convicted of three “strikes” under California’s Three Strikes Law.
On the morning of Jan. 12, 2018, correctional officers observed blood smeared on the window and leaking out beneath the door of the cell of the victim in this case, 19-year-old Jose Alcantar-Ortega. When correctional officers reached the cell, they observed Alcantar-Ortega lying motionless on the floor in a pool of blood, and Romero and another inmate (Cortez) standing in the back of his locked cell. Two inmate-manufactured weapons were discovered flushed down the cell’s toilet.
While Alcantar-Ortega had over 70 stab wounds to his body, most of them to his back, head and neck area, inmates Romero and Cortez “did not have any injuries and their hands and clothes were covered in the victim’s blood,” according to the DA’s Office.
Alcantar-Ortega was still alive when correctional officers removed him from his cell and life-saving measures were taken by prison medical staff, paramedics and medical staff at Natividad Medical Center. However, three days later, Alcantar-Ortega died from his injuries.
