Palm Springs man who killed girlfriend during rage over breakup sentenced
A 66-year-old man who fatally stabbed his girlfriend during a frenzied attack in Palm Springs ignited when she ended their relationship was sentenced today to 26 years to life in state prison.
A Riverside jury in November convicted Miguel Hernandez Toscano of first-degree murder, child cruelty and a sentence-enhancing allegation of using a deadly weapon in the commission of a felony for the 2022 slaying of 48-year-old Ernestina Oropeza.
During a hearing Friday at the Riverside Hall of Justice, Riverside County Superior Court Judge Jason Armand imposed the sentence required by law.
According a trial brief filed by the prosecution, the defendant and Oropeza were employed at a Coachella Valley casino and became romantically involved after meeting on the job. The roughly five-month-long relationship turned rocky in February 2022 when Toscano discovered the victim had been communicating with another man, whom she described as a friend.
On March 1, Toscano, Oropeza and her three daughters, ages 9, 7 and 4, went to dinner at a friend's house in Desert Hot Springs, but during the drive there and the trip back to Oropeza's apartment on E. Arenas Road in Palm Springs, she and the defendant argued about her interest in the other man, whose identity was not disclosed in court papers.
Before leaving the apartment, Toscano offered to retrieve his girlfriend's children from school the following day as a favor, but Oropeza declined the offer and replied she "no longer wanted to be with the defendant,'' according to the brief.
The victim then exited the apartment to check something in her backyard, and Toscano grabbed a kitchen knife from a table and proceeded to follow her.
In an interview with detectives later, Toscano described what was in his mind, saying, "If I can't have her, then I don't want anyone else to have her," according to the brief.
"The defendant stated that ... his jealousy was overwhelming,'' the document stated.
Oropeza's daughters and their grandmother were together in a room, watching television, when the victim began shrieking. The eldest child, not identified in court papers, told detectives that she witnessed Toscano plunging the kitchen knife into her mother and yelled at him and threw rocks in an attempt to divert him from the deadly assault, but he ignored her.
The children and their grandmother fled for their own safety.
A neighbor called 911, and police officers arrived minutes later, discovering Oropeza "motionless, eyes glazed over, copious amounts of blood on the ground'' around her, the brief said. She was pronounced dead at the scene. Toscano was nowhere in sight.
However, the next morning, he went to the Palm Springs Police Station and surrendered, admitting his culpability, telling an investigator in Spanish, "I made a big mistake. I came to face the consequences."
Toscano had no documented prior felony convictions in Riverside County.
