Kevin Eduardo Cataneo Salazar will spend the rest of his life in prison after a Los Angeles County judge sentenced him Thursday to life without the possibility of parole for the 2023 ambush murder of Sheriff’s Deputy Ryan Clinkunbroomer.
The sentence followed an Aug. 24 first-degree murder conviction. Jurors also found true special circumstances that Clinkunbroomer was a peace officer, that Salazar lay in wait, and that he fired from a vehicle. They separately found that Salazar personally used a .22-caliber revolver.
The verdict did not immediately settle where Salazar would be sent. He had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, requiring the same jury to decide whether he was legally sane when he killed Clinkunbroomer.
That question was answered Sept. 2, when the jury rejected the insanity defense. The finding left Salazar facing life in state prison without the possibility of parole.
The Final Sentence
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Thursday’s hearing included two last attempts by the defense to undo the result. An NBC Los Angeles courtroom report shows defense attorney George Rosenstock first seeking a new trial on the jury’s sanity finding. After the judge denied that motion, Rosenstock argued that his own representation of Salazar had been inadequate and sought a new trial on that basis as well.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Ronald S. Coen rejected the arguments and imposed what he described from the bench as the term prescribed by law: “life without the possibility of parole.”
Clinkunbroomer’s parents and siblings addressed Salazar before the sentence was imposed. His mother, Kim Clinkunbroomer, told the court that her son’s absence remains part of the family’s everyday life.
“His life did matter. Ryan did matter,” she said, according to ABC7’s account of the hearing. “I will never stop being his mother. I will never stop grieving my son.”
Outside The Station
The murder happened shortly before 6 p.m. on Sept. 16, 2023, after Clinkunbroomer left the Palmdale Sheriff’s Station while on duty.
According to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the 30-year-old deputy was in uniform and alone in a marked patrol vehicle when he stopped near Sierra Highway and Avenue Q. A passerby later found him unconscious inside the SUV and ran to the nearby station for help.
The District Attorney’s Office later established a more complete sequence. Salazar followed the deputy as he left the station, then fatally shot him from his own vehicle less than a block away before fleeing.
Clinkunbroomer was taken to a hospital, where he died that night. He had served with the department for eight years and had become engaged four days before his death.
Salazar was arrested two days later at his Palmdale home following an intensive search and a standoff.
A Separate Verdict
Salazar’s insanity plea created a second phase of the 2026 trial even after jurors determined that he committed the murder.
On Sept. 2, the jury found that he was legally sane at the time of the killing. Had the jury reached the opposite conclusion, the case would have resulted in commitment to a state hospital rather than the prison sentence imposed Thursday.
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said after the sanity verdict that Salazar would return to court Oct. 1 for sentencing. The office identified Deputy District Attorneys Michael Blake and David Ayvazian of its Crimes Against Peace Officers Division as the prosecutors on the case.
Three years after Clinkunbroomer was found mortally wounded less than a block from the station where he worked, Coen ordered Salazar to spend the remainder of his life in state prison.