A Fresno jury has found Christopher Turner guilty of first-degree murder in the August 2022 shooting death of his 73-year-old neighbor, Robert Torres. The verdict was handed down Friday morning in a courtroom following a trial that leaned heavily on surveillance footage, forensic testimony, and items investigators found inside Turner's apartment.
Torres was shot near Orchard and Yale avenues in central Fresno in August 2022, according to ABC30 Fresno. Officers who responded found Torres suffering from multiple gunshot wounds, and he was pronounced dead at the scene, as reported by abc30.com. Bystanders had discovered Torres lying in the roadway minutes after the shooting and notified police, the outlet's coverage of the trial noted.
Forensic pathologist Dr. Angelee Chen testified that Torres sustained three gunshot wounds during the encounter, including wounds to the left side of his head and near his left shoulder. She also testified that an X-ray appeared to show a bullet in Torres' head, according to the same account of the trial's testimony.
Surveillance Footage and a Missing Gun
Prosecutors used surveillance footage to establish a timeline they said showed Turner following Torres before the shooting and then walking away from the scene afterward, per the station's report on the case. Investigators testified they located a gun holster and an expired firearm-safety certificate inside Turner's apartment, but no firearm was ever found there.
Fresno Police Sgt. Ben Barnes was asked directly about the missing weapon during testimony. “No firearm was found anywhere in Mr. Turner's apartment, correct?” was the line of questioning put to him, and the article notes that his answer confirmed investigators came up empty-handed on that front, even as prosecutors argued the medical evidence was consistent with a close-range shooting.
Sentencing Still to Come
Turner will be sentenced at a later date, the outlet reported following Friday's verdict. A Fresno County Superior Court calendar lists a Christopher Henri Turner in custody for a hearing this week, with attorney Jonathan Richter representing him under case number F22906293, according to the Superior Court of California, County of Fresno. That court record is a brief calendar listing, so its full connection to the sentencing timeline remains unclear.
A City's Violent Crime Numbers Keep Falling
The Torres killing came during a period when Fresno was recording far more homicides than it does now. The Fresno Bee reported that the city had logged 51 homicides at the same point in the year the killing was first reported. Citywide, Fresno recorded 60 homicides in 2022, a number that fell to 35 in 2023 and 30 in 2024, according to GV Wire.
Shooting incidents followed a similar downward path, falling from 449 in 2022 to 221 in 2024, GV Wire's report on the police department's crime data shows. Gunshot victims dropped from 218 in 2022 to 107 in 2024 over that same span, and the Fresno Police Department reported a 97 percent clearance rate for murders in 2024. The Torres case, now resolved with a conviction years after the shooting, fits into that broader pattern of violent crime cases working their way through the city's courts even as new incidents have declined.
