WOODLAND — A Yolo County jury found a Woodland man guilty of first-degree murder Thursday, ruling that Rohail Sarwar acted with premeditation when he fatally stabbed a massage worker nearly one year ago, and not in the heat of passion, as his attorney had argued.
Sarwar, 28, stood with his hands clasped in front of him, listening through a Punjabi language interpreter as the verdict also convicted him of the special-circumstance allegations of lying in wait and murder in the commission of a burglary, both of which will send him to prison for life without the possibility of parole. He also was found guilty of assault with intent to commit a sex crime.
Yolo Superior Court Judge Paul Richardson set Sarwar’s sentencing hearing for Sept. 12 at 1:30 p.m.
Prosecutors argued following the two-week trial that Sarwar fully intended to kill victim Junying Lu, buying a pocket knife from a nearby liquor store shortly before entering Cottonwood Massage, where employees had repeatedly refused his solicitations for sex in the weeks leading up to the Aug. 21, 2018, homicide.
Security-video footage offered as evidence during the trial showed Sarwar casing the massage business from across the parking lot that afternoon, waiting until another customer left before going inside. Lu, an employee for less than a month, had been working by herself.
A viewer of copious amounts of pornography found on his cell phone, Sarwar was “desperate” for sex that day, prosecutors said. Unable to meet up with his boss’ wife, with whom he’d been having an affair, he sought relief inside the walk-in massage business despite being blacklisted in the past over his demands.
“He was going to have a sex act with Junying Lu one way or another. Whether she agreed to it or not, it was going to happen,” Deputy District Attorney Frits van der Hoek told the nine-man, three-woman jury in his closing argument. “When she resisted him, and he couldn’t force her into that sex act, he decided he was going to kill her.”
Van der Hoek also noted Sarwar’s reported sexual attacks of his mistress and Cottonwood Massage’s owner — both women testified during the trial — and reminded jurors they could consider that the defendant “has a propensity to commit acts of sexual assault.”
Sarwar’s public defender, Ron Johnson, used his closing remarks to remind jurors of their pledge to critically review the evidence that prosecutors put forth, and questioned whether they met their burden to prove the allegations beyond a reasonable doubt.
While he suggested at one point that someone else could have committed the crime — noting that first responders arrived on scene to find the rear door of the business unlocked and accessible by another intruder — he later offered jurors a scenario that lessened Sarwar’s culpability for the killing.
“Everything about that scene indicated someone got angry in the heat of the moment and snapped — that’s not time for premeditation and deliberation,” Johnson said, referring to the business’ blood-spattered bathroom and hallway area where Lu, 51, succumbed to her 14 stab wounds, four of which were deemed fatal.
Johnson theorized that his client bought the knife “on a whim” for his landscaping job, along with a Four Loko malt beverage that had an alcohol content equivalent to a six-pack of beer. He downed the drink before going in for a massage, perhaps thinking he’d get a sexual favor as well.
“She said something that set him off because he’s too drunk to think rationally,” Johnson said, laying the groundwork for a potential second-degree murder verdict. “He grabs the knife he just bought and acts in a frenzy, and the victim is deceased. …That would be someone acting in a fit of rage, and the law treats that differently.”
But jurors didn’t buy that explanation, returning their verdict after a day of deliberations.
“This is the type of conduct that tears lives apart,” Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig said in a news release. “We cannot bring Mrs. Lu back to her family, or even imagine the depths of their pain. We only hope that knowing her killer will never be free can bring them a small amount of solace as they continue to mourn the loss of their loving wife, mother, and grandmother.”
Johnson declined to comment as he left the courtroom.
— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8048. Follow her on Twitter at @laurenkeene