Joshua Manu was sentenced Thursday to life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus additional decades, after an El Cajon Superior Court jury convicted him on 21 felony counts stemming from two violent home invasions carried out in San Diego County back in February 2017. One of those break-ins, in Lemon Grove, ended with Manu's own 15-year-old accomplice shot dead inside the home the pair had broken into.
Manu, now 33, was convicted of carrying out the two robberies on consecutive days, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. His felony counts included robbery, kidnapping and attempted murder, and prosecutors say he opened fire on the second home during that Lemon Grove robbery. Court records reviewed by the Union-Tribune show the case took years to reach this point: Manu wasn't arrested until 2019, more than two years after the crimes, and wasn't ordered to stand trial until 2021.
A Pre-Dawn Break-In in City Heights
The first robbery unfolded around 4:30 a.m. when Manu and his co-conspirators broke into a City Heights home, according to the Union-Tribune's reporting. The intruders held the people inside at gunpoint and stripped the occupants of their clothes. Per the district attorney's office, as cited by the Union-Tribune, Manu and his co-conspirators also stabbed the home's occupants repeatedly. That robbery alone left five residents held at gunpoint and robbed, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune's 2021 coverage of Manu's trial order.
The Lemon Grove Break-In Turns Deadly
The next night, Manu and 15-year-old Derrick Harris Jr. entered a house on Edding Drive in Lemon Grove shortly before 2 a.m. and confronted a homeowner and his son, per the Union-Tribune's account. During the confrontation, Harris struggled over a gun with one of the residents and was fatally shot in the struggle. Investigators said the homeowner used one of the intruders' guns to shoot Harris in the torso, killing him, according to a report from NBC San Diego. The homeowner's 22-year-old son was also shot and injured during the robbery, as reported by Times of San Diego.
Harris's age has been reported inconsistently across coverage of the case. FOX 5 San Diego identified him as 15 years old at the time of the shooting, while the East County Californian reported he was 16 and described him as Manu's cousin. A murder charge tied to Harris's death was ultimately dismissed, according to the Union-Tribune's 2021 report, though Manu remained charged with a slate of other felonies connected to both robberies.
Years Between Arrest and Sentencing
The case dragged on for years before reaching Thursday's sentencing. Manu wasn't arrested until August 2019, per the East County Californian, and it took until May 2021 for a judge to order him to stand trial on nearly 20 felony counts. By the time the case reached a jury, that number had grown to the 21 counts on which he was ultimately convicted, including robbery, kidnapping and battery with serious bodily injury, per NBC San Diego's report on the sentencing.
Manu now has 60 days to appeal the sentence. For the family of Derrick Harris Jr., and for the victims of both the City Heights and Lemon Grove robberies, Thursday's sentencing closes out a case that stretched across nearly a decade — from a violent two-day crime spree in February 2017 to a life sentence handed down this week in El Cajon Superior Court.
