Gang member convicted of four murders, including a racially motivated killing of a black 16-year-old, was sentenced to death

Gang member convicted of four murders, including a racially motivated killing of a black 16-year-old, was sentenced to death Monday.
Ralph Steven Flores, 26, was convicted in March for killing the teen and three other people between 1999 and 2004. One victim was shot outside a Christmas party. Another was beaten and strangled. "This defendant will kill for just about any reason," said Kathleen Kennedy, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge. Kennedy imposed three death sentences, and a life sentence for the 1999 murder of Christopher Lynch, a black teenager Flores killed when he was 17. Because Flores was a minor, he was not eligible for the death penalty for that murder. "Our family has been destroyed," the boy's mother, Kim Lynch, told the judge before the sentence was handed down. "He did not deserve to leave this earth in the way that he did." Flores was convicted of shooting Claudia Chenet to death in 2003 because he believed she helped police arrest another gang member. He was also found guilty of shooting Miguel Reyes outside a Christmas party in 2004, and beating and strangling to death Fenise Luna in 2004. Two other men, Steven Henry Zamora, 40, and Frankie Paul Martinez, 22, are also serving time for Luna's death. Flores' defense attorney, Pierpont Laidley, previously suggested the jury swayed in favor of execution by other recent gang-related killings and "hysteria against gangs."