Insets, top to bottom: Eddie Foster and Ricardo Vazquez-Gongora. Background: The location where Foster was killed in San Diego, California (KFMB).
A carjacker who killed a U.S. Navy sailor and father of four who was thrown from the hood of his car in California as he tried to stop the car theft has learned his fate.
Ricardo Vazquez-Gongora, 19, was sentenced on Friday to 15 years to life in state prison over the death of Eddie Foster, 32. Vazquez-Gongora previously pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.
“This man broke my kids. He broke me,” said Foster’s widow, Ashley Foster, in a video recording played in court, City News Service reported. “He did nothing but help people his entire life,” she said. “This man took our life away. So give him 15 years.”
The series of events leading to Foster’s death started in the early morning hours of June 11, 2023. Foster, working a second job as an Amazon delivery driver, was making a delivery when Vazquez-Gongora and a teenage girl hopped into Foster’s idling Honda Accord after a night of drinking.
Then the killer made off with the car.
At a bail hearing shortly after the tragedy, San Diego Superior Court Judge Carlos Varela said Vazquez-Gongora was using drugs too, local CBS, The CW, and MyNetworkTV affiliate KFMB reported.
“He stole a vehicle. The victim tried to stop him from stealing the vehicle. Got on the hood of his own vehicle. And Mr. Gongora kept driving for three to five minutes,” Varela said. “He swerved to throw the victim from the vehicle before eventually slamming into a toll booth, causing life-threatening injuries.”
As he held on to the hood of his car, Foster was “pleading for his life” and managed to call 911, telling a dispatcher that “he was going to be killed,” prosecutors said.
The Coronado Police Department’s Communications Center received a call at 5:20 a.m. about a tan sedan traveling on Orange Avenue with a man on the hood yelling, the agency said in a press release.
A short time later, police received a call about a vehicle with someone on the hood near a toll plaza and a collision, with the driver and passenger running away from the scene, authorities said.
Police found the vehicle had collided with a concrete toll structure. Officers found Foster lying in the road. He was hospitalized. The 18-year-old driver and his juvenile female passenger were found on a bridge access road, and Vazquez-Gongora was arrested, police said.
Foster’s mother, Diana Medlen, told the San Diego Union-Tribune that her son relied on the car for work to support his family.
“He felt that car was the only means to support his family and keep them financially stable,” Medlen said. “He needed to make sure they had food in their stomach.”
Foster served as a Navy Aviation Technician stationed at Naval Air Station North Island. His mother, Diana Medlen, said he donated his heart, liver, lungs and kidneys, local NBC affiliate KNSD reported.
“He saved three lives,” Medlen told the outlet. “He’s a hero.”
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