An ex-con who was found guilty of the shooting death of a 27-year-old man at a Monrovia liquor store two days before Christmas in 2023 in a crime caught on video was sentenced Thursday to just over 60 years to life in state prison.
Superior Court Judge Mildred Escobedo said that there was “simply no reason” for Deon Armstrong to shoot the victim, Antonio Zaza, on Dec. 20, 2023, and called the crime cold and callous.
The judge cited a pattern of “criminality” by the 29-year-old defendant and noted that he had a prior strike from 2018 for a robbery at gunpoint at a party that resulted in his sentence on both counts being doubled.
Armstrong was convicted June 6 of one count each of first-degree murder and possession of a firearm by a felon.
In her sentencing brief, Deputy District Attorney Yoobin Hernandez wrote, “Two days before Christmas day in (2020), a mother lost her only son. Antonio Zaza died on the floor of a Monrovia liquor store and his last moments of agony were captured in the store surveillance video. Defendant Armstrong, motivated by his gang ideology and belief, gunned down a complete stranger, an innocent patron of a local liquor store who was simply entering the store that night.”
The prosecutor noted that the victim had a tattoo on his face that may have resulted in him being targeted and “mercilessly executed.”
“Although we would never find out exactly what words were said by Armstrong or by the victim, the surveillance video indicates a very brief interaction before the ultimate execution,” the deputy district attorney added.
Co-defendant Trayvon Dixon, now 24, was sentenced to 22 years in state prison after pleading no contest to voluntary manslaughter in 2022. The prosecutor said he acted as a lookout.
Armstrong and Dixon were arrested in January 2021 in connection with the killing.
The victim’s mother, Madlena Plutae, who was in the downtown Los Angeles courtroom for Armstrong’s sentencing, said afterward that she is “devastated.”
“For what?” she said outside court about her son’s killing. “He didn’t harm anyone. He just came from work. … It seemed so unreal.”
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