Nearly 23 years after Pasadena store owner Vincent Mejia was shot and later died in a robbery, authorities Friday charged a Hawaiian man already awaiting trial for a killing in Orange County with the slaying.
Prosecutors allege that Richard Curtis Morris Jr. and a second, unidentified man entered small, family-run Manner Market in the 2500 block of East Colorado Boulevard on May 15, 1987, and demanded money from a clerk near a cash register.
When Mejia tried to intervene, Morris and the second man are accused of pistol-whipping him and shooting him in the chest. The robbers fled with $3,800. Mejia died June 2, 1987, as a result of his gunshot injuries.
Investigators from the Orange County district attorney’s office connected Morris, 56, to the Pasadena slaying. Prosecutors charged him with Mejia’s slaying because he is already a defendant in a cold-case murder from the same year in Orange County.
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