A Buckeye man has been sentenced to life in prison for a deadly 2020 road rage incident, according to Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell.
Steven Orona was convicted by a jury for the killing of 39-year-old Larry Milligan in a drive-by shooting that occurred in September 2020, according to a July 18 news release from the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office.
Orona, 35 at the time of the shooting, shot Milligan in the head near Southern Avenue and Gibson Lane in Phoenix.
According to court documents and security camera footage used in the prosecution, the incident escalated when Orona, driving an SUV, pulled up alongside Milligan’s vehicle and fired a gun out of an open window, striking Milligan in the head.
Milligan’s vehicle rolled and crashed on the roadway, according to court documents. Phoenix firefighters reported Milligan was pronounced dead at the scene.
Milligan was the sole occupant of the vehicle, according to the Phoenix Police Department. He was survived by his wife and their three children, the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office said.
“An exchange that lasted 48 seconds destroyed a family,” wrote Mitchell in the news release from the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office.
A jury found Orona guilty of first-degree murder, a class one felony, and drive-by shooting, a class two felony, according to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office.
Following the shooting, Orona took deliberate steps to conceal the vehicle used in the crime and involved his girlfriend, Yessenia Gracia Rocha, in a plan to evade law enforcement, the news release said.
More than a month after the shooting, police located the vehicle Orona had driven, hidden on a Buckeye property owned by his girlfriend’s family. The vehicle’s rims had been painted black in an apparent attempt to avoid detection, according to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office.
Rocha, Orona’s girlfriend who was present during the shooting, was previously sentenced to one year of probation after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge of tampering with physical evidence, the news release stated.
“We see road rage shootings like this far too often, and anyone who resorts to this level of violence out of anger belongs in prison,” added the county attorney, who thanked the office’s staff for reaching the sentence.
Contact reporter Rey Covarrubias Jr. at rcovarrubias@gannett.com. Follow him on Instagram, X, Threads and Bluesky: @ReyCJrAZ.
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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Buckeye man sentenced for deadly road rage shooting