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A 19-year-old Brownsville man convicted of stabbing his 63-year-old neighbor to death when he was just 16 has been sentenced to 50 years in prison.
George Neftaly Rodriguez was sentenced Monday morning for the Dec. 14, 2020 murder of Maria Teresa Esparza, the Cameron County District Attorney’s Office said in a news release.
The killing happened in the 4200 block of Boca Chica Boulevard in Brownsville.
He pleaded guilty to murder on March 18.
The indictment said he caused Esparza’s death by hitting her on the head with a glass candle and stabbing her multiple times during an attempted aggravated robbery.
He was certified to stand trial as an adult in March 2021.
Police responded to Esparza’s Waterside Apartment that day in reference to a subject down where they were flagged down by her son, Francisco Esparza Jr., who said his mother was inside the apartment.
He went to the location because he had been calling her, but she didn’t answer, according to an incident report.
He noticed the door was locked and used his key to open it, which is when he noticed the freezer door was open.
Esparza found his mother in her bedroom with “blood splattered throughout the floor.”
Police found her body face down, the report stated.
“Officers then checked the surrounding area and noticed the room looked like it had been ransacked as makeup containers were scattered through the entrance to the bedroom door along with a set of keys and a wooden fold up table. Officers also noticed pieces of hair on the bottom of one of the legs of cabinets and noticed two kitchen knives and a pair of scissors next to the victim’s head,” the report states.
Further down in the report it states that Mrs. Esparza’s phone appeared to have been tossed inside a nearby trash dumpster. They could hear a “phone buzzing inside the trash dumpster outside the apartment.”
The Cameron County District Attorney’s Office press release on the sentencing describes the crime as “very heinous, shocking and extremely alarming,” adding that Esparza had been “very nice to him.”
Furthermore, the release said that the majority of murder cases in the last 18 months average a 21-year-old defendant and a 21-year-old victim.
Cameron County District Attorney Luis V. Saenz thanked the team of prosecutors, investigators, crime victim liaisons and police who sent Rodriguez to prison for 50 years.
“Their work was pivotal in building the case against Rodriguez and securing justice for the family of Maria Teresa Esparza,” Saenz said in a statement.