Rudy Soriano was sentenced today for the March 2010 murder of 32-year-old Rodolpho Yurralde, after which he wheeled Yurralde's dead body around a Phoenix apartment complex before accidentally tipping it over.
Soriano, 26, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in April.
Phoenix police found Yurralde's body outside of a west Phoenix apartment complex on March 13, of last year. Residents of the complex later told police they'd watched as a man wheeled the body into an outdoor common area in a shopping cart.
The cart tipped over, Yurralde's dead body fell out, and the the suspect -- later identified as Soriano -- took off running, witnesses told police.
Soriano was arrested several month later, in June, after detectives determined he was the man pushing the cart.
How Soriano killed Yurralde -- and his motive for doing so -- are
unclear at the moment. All media accounts of the murder we could find
focus on the fact that Soriano pushed the body around in a shopping
cart, not how he actually murdered Yurralde. We plan to check his
pre-sentencing report tomorrow to get all the details.
Soriano's no stranger to Arizona's prison system -- he was released in June 2009 from an Arizona prison after serving three
years of a four-year sentence for aggravated assault and auto theft.
