A California man is likely to spend the rest of his life in prison for the disappearance and revenge murder of a classmate whom he blames for his expulsion from high school some years ago.
Owen Skyler Shover, 23, is from Hesperia, a big city in San Bernardino County, approximately 80 miles northeast of Los Angeles.
In January 2019, the defendant murdered Aranda Isabel Briones, 16, and buried her someplace in the harsh San Bernardino Mountains nearby. To date, the girl’s remains have never been discovered.
Shover was found guilty of first-degree murder and lying in wait by a jury of his peers on Wednesday. According to Golden State law, unique circumstances are sentence enhancements that, if applied, must result in one of two outcomes: life in prison or death.
On January 13, 2019, two of the girl’s friends witnessed her getting into the now-condemned man’s automobile at Bayside Park in Moreno Valley, Riverside County. After that, she disappeared. The sole sign of the child was her blood, which had accumulated in the trunk of Shover’s Nissan Versa.
However, the perpetrator and victim had a far longer history together.
They were pals who attended Moreno Valley High School together. On November 7, 2017, a group of students, including the ill-fated couple, were hanging out in a nearby park instead of attending lessons. Shover carried a tiny firearm that day. When truancy police broke up the party, Shover tossed the handgun at Briones and ordered her to hide it, according to a trial brief written by Riverside County District Attorney Mike Hestrin and acquired by City News agency, a California-based wire agency.
Briones frightened. She threw the rifle into a drainage ditch — and was supposedly caught doing so. When questioned by police authorities and school officials, she ultimately admitted that the pistol belonged to Shover, and he handed it to her.
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In February 2018, both Briones and Shover were expelled.
The daughter transferred to another school but remained in the area, while the boy was forced to go home with his father in Hesperia, almost 50 miles north. Out: the Inland Empire, which is next to the Southern California shoreline and the larger Los Angeles metropolitan region. In the more distant and dry surroundings of the Mojave Desert, with its accompanying sagebrush, Joshua trees, and cactus after cactus.
During a jury trial that began on August 12, prosecutors said that Shover had been nursing his resentment for over a year in the dry heat.
Law enforcement documented a sequence of social media exchanges from November 2018 to January 2019 in which the defendant attempted and finally obtained another pistol.
Then, on January 12, 2019, Shover invited Briones to hang together again. In the text exchanges mentioned by prosecutors, he promised the girl a Wild West experience: she would join him on drug deliveries and ride along while he “robs drug dealers.”
The girl accepted for whatever reason, whether it was the excitement of crimes that could scarcely be punished or a supposedly mended gap. They gathered in Bayside Park at 5 p.m. the next day. Within an hour, she was uploading images of the old pals reuniting, her joy at being reunited with the “homie” once more, and her delight at being permitted to do some driving.
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However, the hour was only brilliant for approximately that long.
Minutes before 6 p.m., the automobile was driving north toward a trailer park in San Bernardino County. Along the way, Shover texted his brother, “Get ready for tonight. Get the shovels and lighter fluid ready.
The guys then took state Routes 138 and 18 to the lofty mountains. Due to a lack of cellular phone data, it is difficult to determine where they went between 8:30 p.m. and 10:15 p.m. Owen Shover’s phone only switched back on after he returned to his father’s house on Grevillea Street.
Gary Anthony Shover, 27, pled guilty in March to one count of accessory after the fact. He was sentenced to one year in county prison, followed by twelve months on probation. The elder brother was initially charged with Briones’ murder (as well as the lying-in-wait enhancement), but the indictment was dropped in 2022.
According to a report by City News Service, the older Shover eventually acknowledged the cover-up but not the original crime. A neighbor reported seeing investigators recover garments and blankets from holes in their backyard, which were used as evidence to prosecute them both.
While the older brother accepted the plea offer, the younger sibling chose a 6-day trial. After more than a day of deliberations, Riverside County jurors decided his fate. Because the death penalty is essentially nonexistent in California, he will face a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole when he is sentenced on October 25.