Third Defendant in Brutal Mother-Daughter Murder Convicted
(Bronx, NY – October 23, 2015) – Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson announced that this afternoon, the third defendant in a brutal double-homicide was found guilty for his part in the horrific crime, following a month-long jury trial.
After two days of deliberation, the jury found 28-year-old JOSHUA LOPEZ guilty of:
Murder in the 2nd Degree (Class A Violent Felony, 2 counts)
JOSHUA LOPEZ acted in concert with previously convicted and sentenced ANDREW SCOTT and BRITTNEY AUSTIN in their brutal murder of a mother and daughter, IDA and JANA RANDOLPH. The trio’s plan was for SCOTT and AUSTIN to rob the 65-year-old IDA and the 23-year-old JANA on the night of October 1, 2013 in their Bedford Park apartment, getting their ATM cards and PIN numbers to loot their accounts.
LOPEZ’s role in the plan was to get the women’s cash and cards in order to get more money. But bank records and surveillance video showed him trying, but failing to get money from Jana’s account. At one point, he called ANDREW SCOTT, who was still in the women’s apartment, with the two victims who had been bound and beaten for their PIN numbers.
When the first PIN number didn’t work, LOPEZ phoned SCOTT. ANDREW SCOTT extracted another PIN from JANA RANDOLPH, and the screams were heard in the background.
BRITTNEY AUSTIN had tied the women with duct tape. ANDREW SCOTT, the one-time boyfriend of JANA RANDOLPH who’d lived with the women but had been kicked out of the apartment by his girlfriend’s mother, bludgeoned the older woman so hard with her own baseball bat, that he crushed her skull a half-dozen times, broke her arm clear through, and inflicted other injuries too horrific to describe.
SCOTT took a sizable kitchen knife to his ex-girlfriend, stabbing her more than a dozen times, some of the cuts three inches deep. He then bludgeoned her to death.
He then met up again with JOSHUA LOPEZ who helped him dispose of bloody clothing and the murder weapons. Despite his efforts, LOPEZ failed to get any cash from JANA RANDOLPH’s bank card; he did purchase two MetroCards and withdrew $200 from IDA RANDOLPH’s account.
SCOTT and AUSTIN were sentenced in April, 2015, each to 50 years-to-life in prison. When JOSHUA LOPEZ is sentenced in Part 79, Bronx Supreme Court by Justice Margaret Clancy, he faces the same sentence. His case has been adjourned until November 17th, Part 79, for pre-sentencing motions.
The case against JOSHUA LOPEZ was prosecuted by Bronx Assistant District Attorneys Rachel Kalman-Blustein and Jason Ruiz of Trial Bureau 30/40.
Link to documents, photos, at: http://bit.ly/1MbpCVF
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