Latest news with #Sardinha
Los Angeles Times
4 days ago
- Los Angeles Times
Orange County man gets 26-years-to-life sentence for murder of estranged girlfriend
Craig J. Charron, who broke into his estranged girlfriend's Huntington Beach apartment and fatally stabbed her on the day she changed the locks to keep him out, was sentenced Friday to 26 years to life in prison. Laura Sardinha, 25, had been pursuing an online psychology degree with the hope of counseling women in abusive relationships. She had been trying to escape her relationship with Charron, who had perforated her eardrum in an earlier attack, and she had taken out a restraining order against him. On Friday, three months after a jury convicted Charron of first-degree murder for her September 2020 death, Orange County Superior Court Judge Michael Cassidy called it a 'senseless and brutal' crime and gave him the maximum sentence allowed by law. 'All Laura wanted was to be free of the abuse and the torment,' the victim's mother, Marie Sardinha, told the judge. 'This man should not be out in society. He should never be let out.' The victim's brother, Shawn Sardinha, said he had struggled to find reasons to live after his sister's death. 'I now give updates of my life to a blue vase,' he said. At trial, Charron, 39, described himself as an Air Force veteran and former combat medic with a 100% disability rating. He was receiving psychiatric treatment at the VA. At the sentencing, Charron wore the green camouflage scrubs afforded to inmates who served in the military, and his lawyer said Charron had been participating in veterans programs at the county jail. The victim's father said he was a Vietnam veteran himself and hated any suggestion that Charron might get any leniency as a vet. 'It just makes me sick,' Manuel Sardinha told the judge. He recalled how she would play 'The Twelve Days of Christmas' on the piano at the family home during the holidays. He said injuries from a 2019 motorcycle accident had derailed her ambition of culinary school, but she was planning to use the financial settlement to open a therapy practice. Charron had been dating Sardinha just a few months. She had given him nearly $100,000 of the $750,000 she won in the accident settlement. Two weeks before he killed her, she texted him to say that she could not hear because he had broken her eardrum. She complained that he kept hitting her. He told police her injuries were the result of 'rough sex' and pressured her into dropping charges. On the morning of her death, she recorded herself begging him to get out of her apartment, saying, 'You terrify me, because you don't leave.' When he finally left, he bombarded her with calls and texts, which she ignored. Early that afternoon, at her request, a maintenance worker changed her locks, to keep him out. Nevertheless, Charron somehow slipped back inside around 1:15 p.m. — it is not clear how — while she was on a three-way call with her mom and her best friend. They heard her cry, 'Oh my God, he's here.' The friend hung up to call 911. Sardinha called her back and left a chilling 37-second voicemail, screaming, 'He's gonna kill me!' His voice was eerily absent from the voicemail, which the prosecutor suggested was a function of his calculated, unhurried mindset in killing her. She was dead when police arrived, with stab wounds to the chest and head. He had nearly sliced off her nose. Police found Charron with knife wounds to his chest and neck, which authorities suggested he inflicted on himself to create the fiction that she had attacked him. Deputy District. Atty. Janine Madera said it did not matter whether he faked the wounds or she inflicted them on him in self-defense, since he was the clear aggressor, muscular and towering over her by 9 inches. Three of Charron's ex-girlfriends, who took out restraining orders against him, testified that he had assaulted them. One said he had choked her, a second that he slapped her, a third that he pinned her to a wall. Charron claimed that his confrontation with Sardinha was 'hazy' in his memory but that he acted in self-defense. Defense attorney Michael Guisti said his client's violent history consisted of 'non-murderous violence,' and that he may have acted in the heat of passion when he killed Sardinha. Charron made no statement at Friday's sentencing, and gave no apology.
Los Angeles Times
21-04-2025
- Los Angeles Times
Trial begins for man accused of abusing, killing girlfriend after he was kicked out of Huntington Beach apartment
Prosecutors making opening statements Monday in the trial of Craig Charron said he beat and manipulated Laura Sardinha before she kicked him out of their Huntington Beach apartment Sept. 2 2020, but he came back and killed her while she was on a conference call with her mother and best friend. Attorneys for the defendant did not dispute Charron stabbed his girlfriend to death nearly five years ago. But they say he acted in the heat of passion and in self defense. The couple began dating in June 2020, and had moved into an apartment on the 8400 block of Jenny Drive by July, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Text exchanges between them suggest he had become physically abusive just weeks later. 'I'm locking myself in a box because I can't even drive anymore,' Sardinha wrote in a message to Charron dated Aug.15 of that year. 'You blew out my ear drum.' Charron was heard threatening to 'end this relationship' if the victim refused to massage his calves in videos recorded the following day, before she went to a hospital. Medical records that will be presented in court verify her injury, Senior Deputy Dist. Atty. Janine Madera said. In footage captured the morning Charron killed Sardinha he is heard repeatedly asking for her permission to have a friend over, noting that the visitor and defendant had been intimately involved. 'You're trying to f—- with me and be mean,' Sardinha replied. '...I can't wait to tell her how you beat the s—- out of me.' By that point, she was done with Charron, according to testimony from her mother and best friend. They were among about a dozen of Sardinha's loved ones who showed up at the trial Monday and heard detailed accounts about her final moments alive. Some embraced each other while sobbing in the hallway outside of the courtroom between proceedings. The victim went to her apartment's leasing office, had Charron evicted at about 11:30 a.m. Relatives said she felt relieved to be rid of him. 'She was happy, and I was happy for her,' the victim's friend of 21 years, Shaina Smith, recalled of the last conversation she had with Sardinha. 'And then things changed very suddenly.' Charron showed up at the apartment in the middle of that call. Cries of 'Please don't hurt me,' and 'No' are heard before Sardinha's phone falls to the ground, according to transcripts and recordings played Monday. The victim's mother, Marie Sardinha, who was still on the line at the time, said her daughter 'just kept screaming.' She and Smith hung up to call police. Laura Sardinha called back and wound up leaving a voice message for Smith, in which she is heard 'narrating a portion of her own murder,' Madera said. First responders found Charron's girlfriend curled up in a ball on their bathroom floor, Madera said. She had suffered two stab wounds to the chest as well as numerous slashes to her hands and face. Charron, who is 10 years older than the victim and 10 inches taller, sustained cuts to his left hand as well as lacerations to his chest and throat. He had to be rushed to a hospital for what defense attorneys described as 'nearly mortal' injuries. They claim the defendant acted on impulse, and then on instinct as the altercation unfolded in order to defend himself. Prosecutors claimed the lacerations to Charron's throat were self-inflicted. They also accused the defendant of planting one of the three bloody knives found in their apartment near the victim's body. Madera also pointed out that Laura Sardinha had difficulty gripping knives or reaching out with her right arm following a motorcycle crash in 2019. However, defense attorneys noted that the victim worked as a bar back at HQ Gastropub in Huntington Beach, and would have had the ability to hold at least some objects — or a potential weapon — with her hands. Laura Sardinha was 25 when she died. She was pursuing a psychology degree online with Purdue Global, her mother said.
