Man who killed 3 people, including infant, sentenced to prison

SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) — A man was sentenced to three terms of life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus 75 years to life, for the 2000 shooting and killing of three people, including a baby, prosecutors said.

Sergio Contreras, 47, was found guilty in the shooting deaths of 27-year-old Michael Plummer, 18-year-old Adah Pearson and 22-month-old Julio Rangel, Jr., San Diego County District Attorney Summer Stephan said in a news release Thursday.

In September 2000, Contreras began to shoot into an apartment after one of the residents didn’t pay for a small amount of illegal drugs, according to prosecutors.

Contreras shot Plummer more than a dozen times, Pearson was shot in the heart while sleeping on the couch and another shot went through the wall and struck Rangel, Jr. in the head as he was asleep on a bed. Following the shooting, Contreras left the scene.

The case went cold for several years until 2007 when murder chargers were filed as more witnesses came forward.

Contreras, who was serving time in Mexico for an unrelated robbery and murder, was extradited to San Diego in 2023.

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