LOS ANGELES – A Richmond man sentenced to life in a psychiatric hospital for a brutal, random murder in 2009 is back behind bars this week after police arrested him for escaping his rehabilitation center and spent a month on the run from court, records show.
Michael Villalobos, 41, became a wanted man on August 21 after he escaped from a mental health rehabilitation center in Los Angeles. He was arrested by Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies on Sept. 23 and extradited to Contra Costa County, where prosecutors will try a second time to steer a judge to carry Villalobos in a locked facility, something they didn’t do in court Date back in May, records show.
In 2009, Villalobos beat 79-year-old Euvaldo Sisneros to death because the two passed one another on a sidewalk. The two didn’t know one another and there was no apparent motive for the murder, police said on the time. Villalobos later pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, but in a pre-arrangement agreement with prosecutors, he was found not guilty by reason of insanity and received psychiatric treatment as a substitute of prison time.
At the time of his sentencing, prosecutors warned that Villalobos would grow to be dangerous to others if he didn’t take medication and that he had multiple assault convictions before the murder.
Villalobos has spent the last 18 years in various psychiatric facilities, most recently one in a Hover Street neighborhood in Los Angeles, authorities said.
Back in May, Contra Costa Superior Court Judge Julia Campins rejected a prosecutor's request to transfer him from that facility to Napa State Hospital, a locked facility that frequently houses incarcerated individuals with mental illnesses. Campins was criticized last yr for an identical situation, when a person who had held a Lafayette family hostage escaped from a halfway house after the judge allowed him to qualify for a mental health diversion program over prosecutors' objections .
The Contra Costa District Attorney's Office is renewing its motion in light of Villalobos' alleged escape attempt. He is due in court on Wednesday at 1:30 p.m.
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