Jose Gutierrez-Rosales Kern County, California man beats co worker to death over affair with wife. Court documents fail to indicate whether suspect was actually married to woman and may have separated 3 months prior to attack.
‘This is for getting involved with my family,’ A California man has admitted beating his co-worker to death because he believed that the colleague was having an affair with his wife, according to a report.
Jose Gutierrez-Rosales, 49, allegedly beat Hector Javier Castaneda Vasquez, 56, with an irrigation pipe while the two were working together on April 18, according to newly released details.
‘We were there picking up the pipes,’ Gutierrez-Rosales said to Kern County Sheriff’s investigators, according to KGET, citing court documents. ‘I ate about two tacos, and I felt my body like strange, and then all of a sudden, I grabbed the pipe, and I just started going at him.’
‘This is for getting involved with my family,’ Gutierrez-Rosales reportedly said he told Vasquez as he kept hitting him.
The victim was pronounced dead at the scene. He suffered facial fractures and cuts to his face and back of his head. Several of Vasquez’s teeth were also knocked out, according to court documents.
Anger issues
Gutierrez-Rosales claimed his co-workers made fun of him over the alleged affair before he carried out the attack. He argued ‘they provoked all of this,’ court records stated.
Court documents did not make it clear whether the Gutierrez-Rosales and the women were ever actually married. KGET reported an unidentified woman telling authorities she and Gutierrez-Rosales were in a three-month relationship but stopped seeing each other before the killing. She mentioned the man having anger issues.
Witnesses and co-workers pointed to Gutierrez-Rosales as the killer and he was arrested on April 28 and charged with first-degree murder, according to KGET.
After Vasquez’s death, Gutierrez-Rosales fled in his car, but eventually abandoned the vehicle and began walking to Bakersfield, according to court documents.
He asked God for forgiveness and proceeded to cutting himself with a box cutter.
He told investigators if he wanted to run he would have escaped to Mexico.
‘I’m going to own up to it like a man,’ the man told arresting officers according to court documents.
In late 2021, it was reported that Kern County had the highest homicide rate in all of California from 2016 to 2020. In 2020, the rate was around 12.7 killings per 100,000 residents, according to CalMatters.
Gutierrez-Rosales is being held without bail in his first-degree murder case. Court is set for Tuesday.
