Bay City News
Posted: 05/14/2010 02:15:21 PM PDT
Updated: 05/14/2010 02:15:22 PM PDT
SAN FRANCISCO — A state appeals court has upheld the murder convictions and life sentence of a Vallejo man who doused his ex-girlfriend with gasoline and lit her on fire inside his car in Pinole, killing her two young children.
The Contra Costa County Superior Court convictions and sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole for Mark Fregia, 41, were unanimously upheld by a three-judge panel of the state Court of Appeal in San Francisco on Tuesday.
Devlin Weaver, 6, and Daelin Fregia, 2, were in the back of the car Fregia was driving in Pinole on Dec. 18, 2003. They died when the car ignited after Fregia poured gasoline on their mother, Erin Weaver, from a large soda bottle and set her on fire with a cigarette lighter.
Erin Weaver, 33, suffered burns to 85 percent of her body, but survived. She jumped out of the car and rolled on the ground to extinguish the flames but could not get back into the vehicle to rescue her children.
Witnesses said Fregia did not try to save the children and escaped by hijacking the car of a motorist who stopped to help. He was arrested in San Francisco the next day.
Daelin Fregia was the child of both Fregia and Weaver; Devlin Weaver was Erin Weaver's child from a previous relationship.
Weaver testified she had left Fregia in 2002 after he became abusive. She said that on the day of the murders, he had persuaded her to allow him to drive her and the children on a trip to
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buy toys as Christmas presents.
Fregia testified that he had meant to threaten Weaver with the gasoline and lighter but didn't intend to kill her or the children.
He was convicted of two counts of murder, the attempted voluntary manslaughter of Weaver, kidnapping, mayhem, arson and carjacking.
Prosecutors sought a death penalty, but the jury opted for a sentence of life in prison without parole.
On Tuesday, the appeals court rejected a claim by Fregia, who is African-American, that his trial was unfair because prosecutors excluded a 20-year-old African-American man from the jury.
The court said prosecutors provided a reasonable, non-racial explanation when they said they excluded the black jury candidate not because of his race but because of his age.
This mean killed my niece two kids Devlin and Daelen. this man is a monster . it make me mad that he get 3 meals a day why Erin has to look at her kids in a box for the rest of her life!!! Devlin would have been 13 this yr had so much going for her and Daelen would have been 9 he was a good boy, this man needs to stay in jail NEVER let him out. I don't care what he say. he has been in jail before for 3 yrs never told Erin any thing about that. We did not know about this court date if we had we would have been there. you see the courts don't tell us anything that is going on with this monster!!! but i bet his mother was there!!!!! I'm so mad right now that he even had a court day for something like this. thats what kind of man he is!!
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