An appellate panel today rejected an appeal from a man who shot his estranged wife and killed her mother and brother in the Jefferson Park area of Los Angeles, then fled to Turkey.
The three-justice panel from California's 2nd District Court of Appeal rejected Fraydun Ahmad Kordian's claim that there was insufficient evidence to convict him of an attempted murder charge involving his wife's sister, Maribel Hernandez.
Kordian pulled the trigger twice after his sister-in-law got down on her knees, but the gun was out of bullets because he had already fired at his estranged wife, Rosalia, and fatally wounded his mother-in-law, Zenaida Barrigan and brother-in-law, Fernando Lomeli, according to the appellate court panel's 15-page ruling.
Jurors heard evidence that Kordian threatened to harm his estranged wife's family in the weeks leading up to the Oct. 19, 2005, shooting, after she informed him that she had met someone else and wanted to start a new life, the justices noted.
``The jury was entitled to infer from these events that defendant intended to kill Rosalia's family members as well as Rosalia. The jury was also entitled to conclude that, if he knew the gun was out of bullets, defendant would have walked away from the scene rather than bothering with the ineffective acts of pointing the gun at Maribel and pulling the trigger
twice,' Associate Justice Victoria M. Chavez wrote on behalf of the panel.
Kordian was arrested at Istanbul Ataturk Airport in Turkey two days after the killings, and was held in Turkish custody for almost two years before being returned to Los Angeles in August 2007.
He was later convicted of two counts each of murder and attempted murder and was sentenced to life in prison.
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