Thread: Man gets life in prison in fatal Las Vegas bombing | Willebaldo Dorantes Antonio

Man gets life in prison in fatal Las Vegas bombing

https://www.deseret.com/2010/1/7/203...vegas-bombing/

Summary:
January 7, 2010

LAS VEGAS — A 34-year-old illegal immigrant from Guatemala was sentenced Thursday to life in prison without parole for killing a hot dog stand vendor with a pipe bomb hidden in a coffee cup outside a Las Vegas Strip casino in 2007.

Omar Rueda-Denvers protested that he was wrongly convicted before Clark County District Judge Michael Villani imposed a sentence determined in September by the same jury that convicted Rueda-Denvers and co-defendant Porfirio Duarte-Herrera of first-degree murder and other charges.

"I want to tell you that I am an innocent man of all the accusations that are against me," Rueda-Denvers said through a Spanish translator. "I never solicited the placement of a bomb. I never asked anybody to build a bomb for me — that's a lie. This was absurd and just a shock."

Rueda-Denvers previously apologized and sought leniency from the jury that spared him the death penalty in the slaying of 24-year-old Willebaldo Dorantes Antonio.

Sentencing was postponed until Jan. 28 for the convicted bombmaker, Duarte-Herrera, 29, an illegal Nicaraguan immigrant. His attorney, Clark Patrick, gained the extra time so he could translate for his client a presentencing report that he received Wednesday.