Raul Castro was fourteen years old living in California when he would sexually assault and murder a four year old boy
According to court documents Castro would lure the four year old boy into his home where he would then sexually assault the child. When the little boy began to cry Raul would bring the child to a bathtub and proceeded to drown him.
Castro would put the body of the child into a dryer where he was ultimately discovered
Raul Castro would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for twenty five years
Raul Castro Photos
Raul Castro Now
| CASTRO, RAUL RENATO | AH0674 | 28 | Oct 05 2011 | Pelican Bay State Prison |
Raul Castro Appeal
A state appeals court has reduced the prison sentence of a Central California teenager convicted of molesting and drowning his 4-year-old neighbor and then hiding the boy’s body in a clothes dryer.
The 5th District Court of Appeal ruled that the trial judge erred in adding eight years to Raul Castro’s sentence for his sex-crime convictions. The Mendota teen was convicted of forcible sodomy on a child and a forcible lewd act on a child in addition to first-degree murder in the 2009 slaying of Alex Mercado.
Authorities say Castro, then 14, drowned the preschooler in a bathtub after Mercado said he would tell his mother about the sexual assault.
The Fresno Bee reports that the appeals court reduced Castro’s sentence last week from 33 years- to-life to 25 years-to-life in prison
https://bakersfieldnow.com/news/local/central-valley-teens-sentence-reduced-in-dryer-killing