A Nevada man will spend the rest of his life behind bars for the 2023 shooting death of his estranged wife.
According to 8 News now, Roidan Mendoza, 40, was sentenced Wednesday for the murder of Marillorky Tamayo Cruz.
Clark County Deputy District Attorney Corey Hallquist said during sentencing in Las Vegas that Mendoza wanted to “be vindicated” following a family court hearing that granted Cruz the family home and primary custody of their children.
“He’s upset that he’s losing control, and he wants to get revenge,” Hallquist said.
The incident happened in August 2023, at the home of the victim’s mother, at the Destinations Spring Valley complex in Las Vegas.
After a family court judge ordered Mendoza to pay child support, Mendoza first went home and cut the gas line to the family’s stove. He then went to his mother-in-law’s apartment and shot into a locked door 11 times.
Once inside the apartment, he found the victim in a bedroom and delivered “an execution-style shot to the forehead,” prosecutors said, per the Las Vegas Review Journal.
In the midst of the attack, Mendoza injured the former boyfriend of Cruz’s sister, and injured Cruz’s mother.
Cruz’s then-14-year-old daughter was also injured in the attack after stabbing Mendoza in the back, in an attempt to protect her younger sister.
“The only thing I could do, that I was thinking, was, I had to protect what I had left,” Cruz’s daughter, now 17, told the court Wednesday. “So I grabbed the knife on the ground, and I was planning to kill him because why would I let a man that killed my mother live?”
“I am not a tall person, nor was I strong. I was a 14-year-old girl trying to defend myself and my family.”
On August 25, Mendoza pleaded guilty to murder with use of a deadly weapon, but contended that the killing had not been “a premeditated homicide.”
“He knows he shouldn’t have lost control,” Chief Deputy Special Public Defender Charles Cano said. “But unfortunately, he did lose control. He didn’t want this to happen, he never wished it did, but being upset and angry and injured, he entered into this red zone of emotions.”
The prosecution played two 911 calls to the court. During one of the calls, Cruz was heard frantic before two gunshots rang out in the background.
While one bullet hit her shoulder, the other bullet fatally struck her in the head.
“The defendant at no point in time during this case has shown any due regard and respect for the sanctity of life,” Hallquist argued.
District Judge Michelle Leavitt sentenced Mendoza to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
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