A court in Arizona has rejected an appeal to have the death penalty served for a Mexican illegal alien charged with the murder of young store clerk, Grant Ronnebeck.
In July, a judge ruled that illegal alien Apolinar Altamirano, 34, was not eligible for the death penalty due to being intellectually disabled. Judge Michael Kemp said that Altamirano had a fifth-grade education and could not get special education owing to his circumstances growing up in Mexico at the time.
The U.S. Supreme Court in 2002 prohibited the execution of those who are intellectually disabled.
Altamirano is charged with fatally shooting Ronnebeck on Jan. 22, 2015. Ronnebeck, then 21, was working as a clerk at a QuikTrip, a convenience store in metro Phoenix.
“He [Altamirano] then stepped over Grant’s body, grabbed a couple more packs of cigarettes, stepped back over Grant and turned and looked at my son. He wanted to make sure he was dead because if he wasn’t, he was going to shoot him again. These are stories that are happening every single day,” Steve Ronnebeck said in June.
“I made a promise right after Grant died that I was gonna keep fighting for Grant and fighting for the American people. Well, what the American people don’t understand is it’s gonna happen to them or to somebody they know at this point with so many people coming across our border,” the angel dad added.
Altamirano has already been sentenced to six years in prison for earlier guilty pleas in the case to misconduct involving weapons.
The case against Altamirano has been cited by President Donald Trump, who has railed against crimes committed against American citizens by immigrants who come into the United States illegally.
Steve Ronnebeck is running for an Arizona Congressional seat. He said he would focus on border security, jobs, and reaching across the aisle if elected.
He said he’d push for quality education, better and more jobs, and bring in new schools to help educate young adults, the unemployed, and the underemployed.