From Andy Furillo:
A Sacramento jury today convicted Vardan Abramyan of first-degree murder for arranging the shooting death of his father three years ago outside a Watt Avenue video store.
Abramyan, 22, will face a life term with no chance of parole at his scheduled Sept. 14 sentencing in front of Superior Court Judge James L. Long. The jury sustained the special-circumstance allegations that the murder was carried out for financial gain and that the victim, Norik Abramyan, 45, was killed by gunmen lying in wait.
Two other juries have reached verdicts against two other defendants in the case, Isaiah Dupree Barron, 22, and Arthur James Battle, 21. Judge Long had held the reading of those verdicts until the Abramyan panel finished its deliberations. The Barron and Battle verdicts are scheduled to be announced on Monday.
Abramyan was accused of paying Barron $4,000 to kill his father.
Norik Abramyan was gunned down July 30, 2006, outside the Hollywood Video store near the Del Paso Country Club. Barron is charged with sub-contracting the murder to Battle and another defendant, Jason Dillingham, who was convicted of first-degree murder in an earlier trial.
Relatives of the victim sobbed inside the courtroom even before the jury came in to announce the verdicts. "He's never coming home," one of them screamed in the hallway outside the courtroom after the panel gave its decision.
Abramyan testified in his own behalf that he arranged the shooting death of his father to stop what he described as years of violence that he said the victim had directed at himself, his mother and his sisters.
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