Mail.comDETROIT (AP) — A 67-year-old grandfather was sentenced Thursday to life in prison with no chance of parole in the killing of two women at a Detroit retirement home.
Mike Reda told police he was filled with rage and alcohol on Oct. 20 when he shot Deborah Socia, 59, and Maria Gonzalez, 61, with an assault rifle at Pablo Davis Elder Living Center on the city’s southwest side. A jury found him guilty earlier this month of two counts of first-degree, premeditated murder, a count of felony murder and other crimes.
Issuing the mandatory sentence, Judge Cynthia Gray Hathaway called the killings a “horrible incident.” Reda, who lived alone at the two-story, 80-unit center, said only: “I’m sorry for what happened.”
Some members of the victims’ families were in the courtroom but declined to speak. Reda, who has more than two dozen grandchildren and great-grandchildren, told police during a videotaped interrogation that he had dated the same woman for several years and that the his victims had befriended her and that they frequently kept his girlfriend away from him.
He said he’d been drinking brandy and couldn’t remember most details of the day, but later in the interview said he approached Socia and another man, Paul Fratangelo, on the center’s grounds with his MP5 rifle.
Reda said his rifle discharged one time “by accident.” He told investigators he then went inside Gonzalez’s apartment, kicked in her door and shot her twice in the head.
http://www.mail.com/news/us/2801348-man-life-prison-retirement-deaths.html#.23140-stage-hero1-2
An MP-5 is not an “Assault rifle”