Jury selection starts for trial of suspect in Pinay nurse's murder

POMONA, Calif.  – Jury selection began June 10 at the Superior Court here for the trial of Tomas Infante, 62, of West Covina.

Infante is accused of killing his wife Charito Vega Tolentino on Jan. 11, 2013. Deputies found her body at the back of her abandoned red Toyota RAV4 at the Hawaiian Gardens Casino parking lot in Hawaiian Gardens on Jan. 13, 2013.

Infante was charged with one count of murder by the District Attorney’s Office, Pomona Branch (Case No. KA100655). He remains in custody at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility in Los Angeles on $1 million bail. If convicted as charged, Infante faces a maximum sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole.

Arrest

Infante was arrested by the West Covina Police and the Sheriff’s homicide investigators on Jan. 14, after serving a search warrant at the couple’s residence on Hollenbeck Street in West Covina.  

The couple had a 17-year-old daughter living at their home at the time.  

Lt. John Corina of the Homicide Bureau, L.A. County Sheriff’s Dept. said Tolentino  appeared to have died from blunt force trauma and “stabbing-type wounds.”  

He also said they found evidence implicating the suspect to the murder but could not reveal what the evidence was, only that “it appears from the evidence that the suspect killed the victim at their home and then transported her body in a car, which he parked and abandoned in the parking lot of the Hawaiian Gardens Casino.”

Investigators believe Infante’s wife was killed on Jan. 11.

According to the autopsy report, Tolentino suffered “stab wounds, head lacerations and multiple bruises.”

Infante reported his wife missing to the West Covina Police on Jan. 12, and told them she worked till Friday morning, Jan. 11, but didn’t come home. She worked as a nurse at the St. Vincent Medical Center in Los Angeles.

It was Tolentino’s sister who found her car in the casino parking lot, according to a family friend, in the 11000 block of Carson Street, and called the Sheriff’s Dept. about 9 a.m. Jan. 13.

VIP

Deputy District Attorney Manuel Garcia, in charge of the Victim Impact Program (VIP) in Pomona, filed the case against Infante.

The District Attorney’s Office established the VIP to ensure that the victims of “highly traumatic crimes” or “life-devastating crimes” which include family violence are given the best possible treatment. The program places specially trained prosecutors in Branch and Area offices throughout the county to specifically deal with these types of cases. This bolters the offices’ ‘vertical prosecution efforts,’ ensuring that one prosecutor handles these types of cases from start to finish. —Philippine News

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