A Ramona man who was found guilty last year of setting up a “kill zone” and fatally shooting his girlfriend’s tenant was sentenced Wednesday to 50 years to life in prison, prosecutors said.
Michael Hughes, 75, was convicted by an El Cajon Superior Court jury in September of first-degree murder with personal use of a firearm causing death in the killing of Mario Velasquez Cardoso, 46, on Nov. 5, 2020, prosecutors said.
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“This defendant carefully planned and carried out a deliberate act of murder that mercilessly ended the life of Mario Cardoso,” District Attorney Summer Stephan said in a statement.
Hughes’ attorney, Anna Yum, could not be immediately reached for comment.
Prosecutors said that Hughes had carefully planned out the killing after he learned his girlfriend, a landlord, was having a property dispute with Cardoso, her tenant at a Ramona home on Pine Street near Olive Street.
In the days leading up to the shooting, Hughes staked out the house, tested his rifle and removed a key surveillance camera that would have captured the killing, prosecutors said. On the day of the shooting, he set a trap for Cardoso by closing a driveway gate at the home, forcing the man to exit his car before heading out to work.
From a sniping position, Hughes fired a fatal shot and then walked back to his truck hidden in a nearby field, investigators said.
Sheriff’s deputies arrived and rendered medical aid until paramedics took Cardoso to a hospital, where he died.
After the shooting, Hughes disposed of the rifle, wiped his computer history and tried to blame the killing on his girlfriend’s ex-husband, prosecutors said. But surveillance camera footage at the scene showed his truck parked at the home about a half-hour before the shooting took place.
Hughes was identified as a suspect within 16 hours of the killing, but there was not enough evidence to arrest him at that time, prosecutors said.
He was later arrested by a member of the San Diego Regional Fugitive Task Force at his home near Rancho Santa Teresa Drive, off state Route 78 in northeastern Ramona.