Damon Benson (Placer County DA mug shot), Cameron Gabriel (as seen in GoFundMe campaign photo).
A Rancho Cordova, California, man convicted of torturing a woman he met on Tinder so he could find out where her other lover lived and murder him under the cover of darkness was sentenced in a Placer County courtroom Tuesday to serve 71 years to life in state prison.
Damon Allen Benson, convicted in September and now 31 years old, during the summer of 2021 carved a swastika into the tortured Jewish woman’s back while the then-29-year-old victim was “tied to his ceiling with a rope” and held her against will at his apartment t0 “ultimately get the address to murder her other lover,” 48-year-old Cameron Gabriel, the Placer County District Attorney’s Office said.
Prosecutors, referring to the case as a “horrific love triangle murder,” detailed that the woman and Gabriel had also met on the Tinder dating app and that Benson, out of “jealousy,” barged into Cameron Gabriel’s home in Rocklin, “ambushed” the victim and shot him to death, and then tried to claim the killing was done in self-defense.
Benson’s self-defense story quickly fell apart, however, in the face of surveillance video that showed how he entered Gabriel’s home “in the middle of the night” and then ran away from the scene taunting the victim.
“The investigation found that Benson ultimately ambushed the male victim in his home and killed him in his room before fleeing the scene. While the defendant tried to claim his actions were in self-defense, surveillance footage shows otherwise. Surveillance shows Benson running into the victim’s home in the middle of the night, followed by immediate gunfire and Benson running out of the home yelling ‘That’s right, [expletive],”” the DA’s office said.
For those crimes, Placer County Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Penney punished Benson with seven decades-plus to life in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation — and prosecutors said that the stiff sentence was the “only way to ensure he doesn’t victimize anyone again.”
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“This is a day for justice for the victim and the victim’s family. We recognize this verdict will not bring [the victim] back and that we cannot undo what this defendant has done to their family. We are humbled to provide justice for this horrific crime to the greatest extent our laws allow,” Placer County’s Supervising Deputy District Attorney Jeffery Moore said in a statement. “The defendant shows a clear danger to the public and a callous disregard for human life.”
The local police department that investigated Cameron Gabriel’s murder also called Benson’s sentencing a “great day for justice.”
“Thank you to the Placer County District Attorney’s Office who worked tirelessly to achieve a conviction in this case,” the Rocklin Police Department reacted.
Cameron Gabriel’s obituary said that he was murdered on July 25, 2021, around seven months after he had moved back to state where he grew up following two decades of living in Oregon.
Gabriel, survived by his mom, stepdad, and two sisters, one of them his twin, was a “kind and funny” man who “was never known to speak a harsh word about or to anyone” and “drank no alcohol and used no drugs,” the obit said. The victim was instead a positive person “known for his witty jokes, entertaining stories, and his Buddhist spiritual beliefs,” his family members said.
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