A 19-year-old man will be sentenced March 24 after pleading guilty to committing nine armed robberies in Chula Vista, National City, and elsewhere.
Deputy District Attorney James Koerber said Ernesto Lamarquez faces a maximum sentence of 15 years in state prison.
Lamarquez was reportedly accompanied by three other teen-agers who have been charged in Juvenile Court, but those records are not public. The other three were aged 15, 16, and 17 at the time.
Another prosecutor is seeking to charge one teen-age boy as an adult in a May 26 hearing.
Koerber said Lamarquez pleaded guilty to all charges and admitted the use of a firearm as a deadly weapon. He appeared before San Diego Superior Court Judge Robert Trentacosta.
He was held to answer on the charges in a July 15, 2019, preliminary hearing in San Diego Superior Court.
The victims were held up from April 17 to April 24, 2019 in Chula Vista, North Park, National City, and City Heights.
Paul Valencia testified he was trying to sell an amp on a website. He said a young man showed up at his Chula Vista home at 9:45 p.m. and asked him to follow him to his vehicle where he had money.
Valencia testified he then saw two people with guns and someone “hit me over the head with the gun.” He was robbed and later had to get three staples in head to close a wound.
Jason Ries testified he was walking in North Park on April 23 at 12:26 a.m. when he felt “someone put something to my head.”
“I was looking down at my phone at the time,” said Ries, who said he was stunned to discover he was being robbed by four people at gunpoint.
Lamarquez, of Spring Valley, remains in jail on $1 million bail.
