{"id":87375,"date":"2025-12-09T07:52:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T07:52:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/87375\/"},"modified":"2025-12-09T07:52:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T07:52:07","slug":"woman-sentenced-in-human-smuggling-case-off-del-mar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/87375\/","title":{"rendered":"Woman sentenced in human smuggling case off Del Mar"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Two<\/a>Del Mar lifeguards look over the capsized boat on May 5 at Torrey Pines State Beach. (File photo by Denis Poror\/Associated Press)<\/p>\n

One of five people charged by federal prosecutors for their roles in a human smuggling attempt<\/a> that led to the deaths of four people \u2014 including two children \u2014 off the coast of northern San Diego County was sentenced Monday to 21 months in prison.<\/p>\n

The mass-casualty incident involved a panga boat loaded with 19 people that left Mexico on May 4, then capsized off the coast of Del Mar the following day.<\/p>\n

Emergency crews responding to the incident found the bodies of 18-year-old Marcos Lozada-Juarez, 55-year-old Gorgonio Placido-Diaz and 14-year-old Prince Patel. Prince\u2019s 10-year-old sister, Mahi, also died, but her remains were not discovered until a few weeks later.<\/p>\n

Several other occupants of the boat \u2014 including the children\u2019s parents \u2014 were hospitalized for injuries ranging in severity from minor to critical.<\/p>\n

Two defendants were arrested on the beach, while three others were arrested in vehicles that had picked up some of the migrants who arrived on the vessel, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n

The two accused of piloting the boat \u2014 Jesus Ivan Rodriguez-Leyva and Julio Cesar Zuniga-Luna \u2014 await trial, while the other three defendants have pleaded guilty.<\/p>\n

Melissa Cota, one of the three defendants arrested in the vehicles, was sentenced on Monday morning. Her defense attorney wrote in a sentencing memorandum that her role was limited to \u201cproviding food and shelter to the undocumented people\u201d and that she would have been involved in bringing them \u201cfurther north for transportation within the U.S.\u201d The attorney said she had no part in planning the smuggling event and only took part in it out of financial necessity.<\/p>\n

Another co-defendant, Gustavo Lara, was also slated to be sentenced Monday, but his sentencing was postponed until February.<\/p>\n

The first defendant to face sentencing, Sergio Rojas-Fregoso, was sentenced earlier this year<\/a> to 16 months in prison. He admitted in a plea agreement to guiding some of the migrants who arrived on shore to vehicles, while also transporting some migrants from the scene in his own car.<\/p>\n

City News Service contributed to this article. <\/p>\n

READ NEXT\n\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Del Mar lifeguards look over the capsized boat on May 5 at Torrey Pines State Beach. (File photo…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87376,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[48890,8504,43757,48891,48892,34307,74,76,75],"class_list":["post-87375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-21-months-in-prison","tag-del-mar","tag-four-killed","tag-human-smuggling","tag-melissa-cota","tag-panga-boat","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87375\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}