BOISE, Idaho — A Boise man who bragged in interviews with police about shooting his stepfather with the man's own gun "to make a point" was sentenced Thursday to life in prison.
Carlos Alonzo Sandoval, 25, will have to serve 35 years of that sentence before he can become eligible for parole.
Sandoval admitted to killing 45-year-old Antoine "Andie" Jones, who had been in a relationship with Sandoval's late mother. The victim and Sandoval lived together in a mobile home on Fry Street, near the intersection of Curtis Road and Fairview Avenue, when the shooting happened.
Sandoval told police that there had already been "bad blood" between him and his stepfather, but the already-strained relationship reached a breaking point on Aug. 2, 2019. On that day, according to text records obtained by police, Jones texted Sandoval to ask whether he could have sex with the younger man's girlfriend, who had recently ended their relationship.
Sandoval responded angrily, and Jones texted back that he was just joking. But the argument continued to escalate, police say, prompting Sandoval to return to the mobile home and gather up all the guns in the house - an AR-15 and nine-millimeter belonging to Jones, and Sandoval's own nine-millimeter - and lay them out on his bed.
Detectives testified that Jones left work early to come back to the home and talk to Sandoval. In recorded interviews with police after his arrest, Sandoval told detectives he was holding his stepfather's handgun when Jones walked in the door and headed back to Sandoval's bedroom to confront him.
Sandoval said that Jones pushed him - an assertion other witnesses in the house say is untrue - and taunted him that he was not "man enough" to pull the trigger.
"I put it up to his chest and I shot him. I kept shooting him and I kept shooting him," he said in the interview. "I would do it again."
Jones, who was hit eight times, died in the entryway to Sandoval's room. One of the bullets the shooter fired struck another woman in the home in the abdomen.
In the videotaped interview, which was played in court Thursday, Sandoval is calm as he describes carrying out the shooting, at times pointing his fingers like a gun and imitating the "pop, pop, pop" of the shots. Even after the first bullet struck Jones, he said, he made the decision to keep firing.
"The first one, I heard him moan, and I heard him start choking on blood, but I kept doing it because I wanted him to shut the f--- up," he said in the interview. "Then I got scared, and I ran."
Sandoval barricaded himself inside a nearby house, and was taken into custody by police several hours later.
As he spoke with detectives at the police department, Sandoval volunteered that he had shot at other people before and confessed that he would like to kill another of his late mother's boyfriends, but has been unable to find that man's location.
When asked by a detective if he had any regrets about what happened to Jones, his answer came quickly.
"He got what he deserved," he said. "I'd do it again if he came back."
Police respond to shooting on Fry Street
Tiffany Holloway, the woman who was hit by one of Sandoval's errant rounds, urged forgiveness, telling the judge that she felt she had lost two friends in the shooting.
"The violence didn't solve anything," Holloway said. "I'm not angry. I don't hate him. I just wish it were different."
The victim's sister, however, said she was less ready to forgive Sandoval. She described Jones as an artistic, musically-talented man who was working to get his life together, and who left behind children and grandchildren.
"I lost my brother," Jones' sister said. "The person responsible can still walk this earth, can still see their child. I have to visit my brother in a wall."
Prosecutor Tamera Kelly argued that Sandoval deserved a sentence of life without parole, pointing to his history of violent acts and incarceration. As a juvenile, Sandoval was abusive toward his mother, younger sister and brother, and fell into drug use, she said, spending long stints of time either in juvenile lockup or on the run from the law. She described the motive in the shooting as "about jealousy, his ego, and being challenged."
The defendant fired multiple rounds, knowing that other people - including a little boy - were just rooms away in the thin-walled mobile home, she said. Kelly also urged the judge to take into account a recorded jail call between Sandoval and his former girlfriend, during which he describes killing his step-father and appears to threaten the woman, telling her "I don't have to wait until I get out, I'll have somebody come talk to you."
"People that push him back, this is the response he gives," Kelly said. "This is a person who will not change."
But Eric Rolfsen, the suspect's attorney, dismissed Sandoval's statements after his arrest as "a lot of misguided tough-guy talk."
The volatility of a house full of guns and drug use created "a breeding ground" for the sort of violence that led to Jones' death, Rolfsen said.
The lawyer noted that Sandoval immediately took responsibility for what he had done, and pleaded guilty to first-degree murder even against his defense team's advice.
"To say he's just an angry guy going around here looking for trouble is just not who he is," the lawyer said.
Sandoval himself apologized in court before the sentence was handed down, in a reversal of his demeanor immediately after the shooting.
"I know the pain I've caused to everybody," he said. "I guess, I just never intended for it to be like that."
As he handed down the 35-to-life sentence, Judge Steven Hippler told Sandoval that two paths stretched out before him. During his decades behind bars, Sandoval might become "institutionalized," further embracing an outlook that violence is the only response to a challenge, the judge said, or he may mature.
"Since a young age, he has reacted in a way that leaves victims in his wake," he said. "It seems to be, what he knows is violence. It seems like his answer to any affront is violence."
Sandoval will be 60 when he goes before the parole board for the first time. Hippler urged the defendant to reflect on the hurt he had caused, and change his behavior in a way that might one day give him hope of a peaceful life outside of prison.
"It's going to take a while, but I think eventually it'll hit you," Hippler said.
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