A San Diego jury has found Davarold Jucynn Zeno guilty of first-degree murder with a lying-in-wait special circumstance for the 2021 killing of 23-year-old Jaylin Moore, who was shot while sleeping in his El Cajon apartment. A judge followed the jury’s finding by sentencing Zeno to life in prison without the possibility of parole, bringing a long-running homicide investigation to a hard close for detectives and Moore’s family.
The El Cajon Superior Court jury returned the guilty verdict and confirmed the lying-in-wait allegation, which legally removed any chance of parole, according to The San Diego Union-Tribune. The outlet reports that sentencing was handed down on March 13, 2026.
El Cajon police say Moore was gunned down in the early morning hours of Feb. 26, 2021, when shots were fired into his apartment from outside on the 800 block of South Magnolia Avenue. His live-in girlfriend found his body around 11:30 a.m. that day, according to the El Cajon Police Department. The department noted that officers had initially responded to reports of gunfire in the area but did not locate a crime scene until Moore was discovered later that morning.
About nine months after the shooting, investigators publicly announced a break in the case. Two men, 24-year-old Willie Reginald Williams and then-21-year-old Zeno, were arrested and rebooked on homicide charges. Both were already in custody on unrelated matters when homicide detectives connected them to Moore’s killing, according to the Times of San Diego.
Prosecutors later told jurors that Zeno and Williams opened fire from outside Moore’s rental residence and argued the plan was to catch the sleeping victim off guard. Williams was also convicted of first-degree murder and lying in wait and is set to be sentenced later in 2026, The San Diego Union-Tribune reports.
What "lying in wait" means
Under California law, the lying-in-wait special circumstance requires proof that the killer hid their true purpose, watched and waited for the right moment, and then carried out a surprise attack. Those elements elevate a murder to a sentence of life without the possibility of parole when a jury finds the allegation true, as outlined by Justia. That is the legal finding that took parole off the table in Zeno’s case.
The conviction and sentencing cap a case that began in 2021 and resurfaced in the public eye when arrests were announced later that year. With Williams still awaiting his own sentencing hearing, prosecutors and El Cajon investigators are nearing the final chapter of a years-long East County murder prosecution.
