Two men were recently sentenced for a shooting at a Pasadena strip mall where an Azusa man was killed and a Duarte woman injured three years ago.
Dante Dejuan Ward of Irvine received 22 years in prison and Evan Roland Bynum of Los Angeles got six years in prison during their April 24 sentencing at Burbank Superior Court, according to court records and the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.
The judge had sentenced the 36-year-old Ward to 11 years and doubled it because he has a prior strike.
On April 10, Ward pleaded no contest to two counts of assault on a person with a semiautomatic firearm while Bynum pleaded no contest to one count of assault on a person with a semiautomatic firearm. Charges of murder and attempted murder against both men were dismissed.
The case stems from a March 13, 2021 shooting in the 2500 block of East Foothill Boulevard. A man walked up to the victims’ parked car and started shooting, police said.
Bernardo Cortez Velasco, 23, died the next day at a hospital from gunshot wounds to the head, neck and chest, the medical examiner’s office said.
The second victim, a 19-year-old woman, had minor injuries, police said.
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