A Kern County jury has convicted Sonny Veleta of second-degree murder in the 2021 shooting death of 19-year-old Cesar Joseph Malta in East Bakersfield, the Kern County District Attorney's Office said. The verdict, reported by KBAK/KBFX from the District Attorney's announcement on October 28, 2026, closes the trial chapter of a case that has been moving through the courts for more than five years — since a planned $200 marijuana sale on a summer night ended with a young man shot in the back as his car pulled away.
Source: KBAK/KBFX via Kern County District Attorney's Office
The jury also found Veleta guilty of shooting at an occupied motor vehicle, discharging a firearm and causing death, and assault with a firearm on the surviving victim — Malta's passenger, who lived through the attack and later testified. KGET's reporting on the verdict added that Veleta had been held without bail ahead of the trial.
The night of August 12, 2021
According to the District Attorney's Office, Malta and Veleta had communicated over Snapchat and arranged for Malta to sell $200 worth of marijuana to Veleta. On August 12, 2021, Malta drove to the intersection of Lake Street and Kern Street in East Bakersfield with an 18-year-old passenger. When they arrived on Lake Street, Veleta walked up to the vehicle with a gun concealed in his waistband and a hood covering his face, and went directly to the open driver's-side window, the District Attorney's Office said.
Without saying a word, prosecutors said, Veleta pulled the gun from his waistband and pointed it at Malta before the transaction had even begun. The passenger witnessed Veleta fire a shot as Malta's car simultaneously moved forward; the bullet struck Malta on the left side of his back. A plastic bag containing marijuana was later found on the vehicle's floor between the driver's seat and the door. KGET reported that police linked Veleta to the Snapchat account Malta had contacted shortly before the shooting, and that the surviving passenger identified him in a photo lineup.
Malta's friend reached across the vehicle and drove them to safety, stopping at the corner of Baker Street and Oregon Street, where he called 911. Bakersfield Police Department officers and medical personnel responded, and Malta was taken to Kern Medical. Despite life-saving efforts, he died from his injury shortly after arriving at the hospital, the District Attorney's Office said.
From juvenile court to an adult conviction
Veleta was 16 years old at the time of the crime, so he was initially charged as a juvenile. In February 2024, his case was transferred from juvenile court to adult court after he was found to be legally fit to be tried as an adult — the step that exposed him to an adult sentence rather than juvenile custody. The case then proceeded to a Kern County jury, which returned the guilty verdicts on October 28, 2026, more than five years after the shooting.
Kern County District Attorney Cynthia Zimmer said: "A choice by a young adult to sell marijuana on the streets is unwise, but that decision is entirely undeserving of the violence that befell the young man and his friend. Such violence demands serious penalties in the adult judicial system."
Background: what the sentence could look like
Second-degree murder in California carries a base term of 15 years to life in state prison. Prosecutors put Veleta's total exposure at up to 54 years to life once the firearm and vehicle-shooting convictions returned by the jury are counted alongside the murder count — the figure the District Attorney's Office gave at the verdict. The gap between the 2021 crime and the 2026 verdict reflects the path the case had to travel: a juvenile filing first, a contested transfer to adult court in 2024, and then a full adult trial in Bakersfield, the Kern County seat in California's Central Valley, on the I-5 and Highway 99 trucking corridors.
What happens next
Sentencing is scheduled for December 9, 2026, when a Kern County judge will set the actual term within the range the verdict allows, up to the maximum of 54 years to life stated by prosecutors. That hearing will also be the point at which Malta's family can address the court. Until then, the October 28 verdict stands as the case's outcome: a murder conviction, in adult court, for a shooting that began as a $200 street marijuana deal arranged over Snapchat.