Felon Fatally Stabbed Girlfriend
RIVERSIDE (CNS) – A probationer who fatally stabbed his 23-year-old girlfriend after he imagined her trying to harm him while they slept at his father’s Moreno Valley home was bound for state prison Monday to serve a sentence of 25 years to life behind bars.
Ricardo Rivera, 28, pleaded guilty in April to first-degree murder under an agreement with the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office.
During a hearing at the Riverside Hall of Justice on Friday, Superior Court Judge Jason Armand certified the terms of the plea deal and imposed the sentence stipulated by the prosecution and defense.
Rivera murdered Ashley Brosious of Moreno Valley on the afternoon of Jan. 17, 2019, in his father’s residence at 23161 Denver Court, near Adeline Avenue.
According to briefs filed by the prosecution and defense, Rivera was a habitual drug user, as was Brosious, and their two-year relationship, which evolved from working together at an Amazon warehouse, was replete with short break-ups due to mutual distrust.
Rivera regularly smoked methamphetamine, and a day before the killing, he had been hospitalized as a result of walking the streets of Moreno Valley in an incoherent, zombie-like condition, according to court papers.
After he was released from the hospital on Jan. 17, 2019, he slept most of the day, as did Brosious, in the southeast bedroom of his dad’s single- story house. The defense said in its pretrial brief that when the defendant awoke around 5 p.m., he was “in a daze induced from use of the meth, and he believed Brosious was attempting to harm him.”
Prosecutors said Rivera went to the kitchen and grabbed an 8-inch chef’s knife, then returned to the bedroom and plunged it into the left side of his sleeping girlfriend’s neck, evidently severing an artery.
Rivera’s father returned home within the hour and found Brosious laying in a pool of blood, prompting him to call 911, according to the prosecution.
Sheriff’s deputies and paramedics arrived a short time later and pronounced the woman dead at the scene.
Sgt. Ben Ramirez said the defendant was at the house and taken into custody without incident.
Rivera had a prior conviction for domestic violence involving his ex- girlfriend, identified only as “V.T.,” whom he choked into unconsciousness during an argument in 2017, according to court records.
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