SAN DIEGO (CNS) - A Loma Linda man who gunned down his estranged younger brother in front of the victim's home in Allied Gardens was insane at the time of the murder, a jury decided Friday.
Jason Douglas Paris, 45, will be sent to Patton State Hospital for life without parole, said Deputy District Attorney Jessica Coto.
The defendant was convicted last month of first-degree murder and lying in wait in the Jan. 17, 2015, death of 42-year-old Cedric Paris.
Coto told the jury that Paris planned to kill his brother because he thought everybody in the family was out to get him.
Coto said the defendant bought a .45-caliber semiautomatic handgun in September 2014 and went to a gun range twice to shoot at human targets before driving to Allied Gardens the night of the murder.
The defendant told his roommate's daughter, "I've got some business to take care of," then drove around his brother's neighborhood for hours before knocking on his front door about 9:45 p.m., the prosecutor told the jury.
The defendant asked his brother to come outside. He shot him four times at close range after retrieving his gun from his SUV, then drove off, the prosecutor said.
The victim's wife called 911 after finding her husband's body in the front yard.
The defendant was pulled over on northbound Interstate 15 near Scripps Ranch. At police headquarters, he told detectives that he became upset when his younger brother -- who he thought was supposed to look after him -- became involved with his future wife, Janeth, Coto said.
The brothers' mother described her sons' story like the Bible story of Cain and Abel, in which Abel found favor with his parents -- Adam and Eve -- and Cain became jealous and killed Abel, according to the prosecutor.
Deputy Public Defender Whitney Antrim told jurors that her client -- who was diagnosed in 1994 was a form of schizophrenia -- believed his brother was a demon and, in his mind, had "no choice" but to kill him.
When he was off his medications, he had the "deranged and delusional" belief that his brother was a demonic figure and that there was "no other way out" but to kill him, the defense attorney said.
"It was God's will," Antrim said of her client's thinking.
Janeth Paris said she and her husband hadn't seen the defendant in two years when he showed up at their home that night.
