A Riverside County jury convicted 23-year-old Owen Skyler Shover of first-degree murder on Wednesday, Aug. 21, agreeing with prosecutors that in 2019, Shover lured 16-year-old former Moreno Valley High classmate Aranda Briones to ride with him to Box Springs Mountain, where he killed her before he and his brother buried her body in the San Bernardino Mountains.
Briones’ body has never been found.
Shover showed no visible reaction when the court clerk read the verdict, which included a special circumstances finding by jurors that he lay in wait. Shover faces a minimum of 25 years to life in state prison when he is sentenced on Oct. 25 in Superior Court in Riverside.
Gary Anthony Shover, 27, pleaded guilty to accessory after the fact in March and was sentenced to one year in jail.
District Attorney Mike Hestrin personally prosecuted this case, assisted by Managing Deputy District Attorney Ivy Fitzpatrick. It was only the second case, Hestrin said, that he has taken the lead on since being elected in 2015 and the first since a 2019 cold-case murder trial in Banning.
Riverside County District Attorney Mike Hestrin said he personally prosecuted the Aug. 2024 murder trial of Owen Skyler Shover in part because the victim, 16-year-old Aranda Briones of Moreno Valley, was ‘a young girl that didn’t deserve to be killed and thrown away.’ (The Press-Enterprise)
“I took the case for a couple of reasons,” Hestrin said in an interview after the verdict. “One, and it’s probably the most important, the facts of the case are compelling and it’s a young girl that didn’t deserve to be killed and thrown away. … I feel like the defendant went to great lengths to try to get away with this, and the prosecutor in me, (my) immediate reaction is, ‘Not on my watch.’ I just had this reaction that I want to go fight for this girl.”
Secondly, Hestrin said, he took the case “to be reminded of the difficulties and the challenges my prosecutors, my investigators and my victim advocates go through. It’s also a good reminder for the people who work in the DA’s Office that I’m not just up there (in my office) ordering them to do this impossible job but that I am willing to take a case and put myself on the line as well.”
Hestrin said it was a challenging case to prosecute because the evidence against Owen Shover was circumstantial.
The DA’s Office said in a court filing that on Jan. 13, 2019, Shover texted his brother: “Be ready for tonight. Get shovels and lighter fluid ready.”
Shover then asked Briones to accompany him on a trip to rob drug dealers. But at their only stop, Box Springs Mountain between Riverside and Moreno Valley, Shover killed her by some unknown means and placed her in the trunk of a car.
Testimony showed that the DNA found in blood in the trunk matched Briones’. Other testimony, featuring cell phone data and surveillance camera images, showed Shover leaving Box Springs Mountain and driving to his parents’ home in Hesperia and then up to the mountains near Crestline.
Briones, who documented her almost every move on social media, according to Hestrin, was never heard from again.
Her disappearance prompted a search involving hundreds of deputies and shook up the community as it happened at the same time that Jesse Perez Torres was facing trial in the kidnapping and slaying of 17-year-old Moreno Valley resident Norma Lopez. Torres was convicted of murder in March 2019 and was sentenced to death.
The Shovers were arrested on Feb. 11, 2019.
Moreno Valley resident Aranda Briones, 16, vanished on Jan. 13, 2019. Her body has never been found. (Courtesy of Riverside County Sheriff’s Department)
Hestrin said Shover’s motive was retaliation for an incident 14 months earlier. Students were ditching school at a park when police showed up. Everyone ran, and Shover tossed a gun to Briones, who was caught throwing it into a ravine. Briones told police that the gun belonged to Shover. Neither was prosecuted for that, but they were expelled from school.
Defense attorney Steve Allen contended there was not enough evidence to convict Shover, especially because there was no proof that Briones was dead. Allen said Wednesday he would withhold comment on the verdict until after sentencing.
Jurors began deliberating on Monday and announced they had reached a verdict at about 10:15 a.m. Wednesday. Foreman Dennis Sandlin, 53, of Moreno Valley, said the decision was not easily reached.
“We all basically went through the evidence from start to finish at least six times,” Sandlin said in an interview. “You are deciding the fate of a young man. For most of us, it was the (evidence of the) planning. The evidence of her DNA being in the trunk was convincing.”
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