Torrance man gets a life sentence for a pair of 2011 rapes and murders

A Torrance man was sentenced today to life in prison without the possibility of parole for raping and murdering a teenage girl and a young woman about eight months apart in 2011.

Geovanni Borjas, 38, pleaded no contest Oct. 31 to two counts each of first-degree murder and forcible rape, along with a single count of kidnapping to commit rape. He also admitted special circumstance allegations of multiple murders and murder during the commission of a rape.

Borjas was charged in May 2017 with the April 24, 2011, killing of 17-year-old Michelle Lozano and the Dec. 26, 2011, slaying of Bree'Anna Guzman, 22. Both victims were also sexually assaulted.

Lozano's body was found alongside the I-5 near State Street in Boyle Heights in 2011. Guzman's partially clothed body was discovered in early 2012, near the Riverside Drive on-ramp to the southbound Glendale Freeway in the Silver Lake area.

Guzman had been reported missing a month earlier. She left her home in Lincoln Heights the day after Christmas to go to a store but never returned.

Police initially did not believe the two killings were related, but detectives were eventually able to connect the crimes through familial DNA.

Prosecutors were originally seeking the death penalty in the case, but that punishment was taken off the table per L.A. County District Attorney George Gascon's opposition to capital punishment.

Guzman's mother said during a court hearing last year that the decision was a "slap in the face" to the victims' families.