McDonald's Manager Sentenced for Robbing Another McDonald's Location

By Bay City News Service:

A former Pleasanton McDonald’s manager was sentenced to seven years in prison Thursday for robbing another McDonald’s in San Mateo last year, District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said.

Felix Jeronimo Gonzalez-Becerra, 43, is also suspected of robbing his own McDonald’s and is expected to face separate charges in that case, according to prosecutors.

The San Mateo robbery happened at the Laurelwood Shopping Center at 1234 W. Hillsdale Blvd. at about 10:30 p.m. on Sept. 2, 2013, when Gonzalez-Becerra forced employees into a freezer at gunpoint, while ordering one of them to open a safe. He ran with the cash he stole, but responding officers broadcast a description of him and his car and he was spotted shortly after in his dark PT Cruiser headed toward the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge, police said.

Gonzalez-Becerra was pulled over on Interstate Highway 880 in San Leandro and found with the money, the clothes he wore during the robbery and a replica gun he used to threaten the employees.

Pleasanton police later learned that Gonzalez-Becerra was a manager at a McDonald’s at Santa Rita Road and Pimlico Drive and connected him to a similar robbery there at about 3 a.m. on Aug. 28, 2013.

Related article: McDonald’s Manager Suspected in Robbery Arrested

In that robbery, a man wearing white cloth gloves and a white full-face mask also forced employees into a freezer at gunpoint, Pleasanton police said. He pleaded not guilty to kidnapping and robbery charges for the San Mateo robbery and faced a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted but entered a plea of no contest in July in exchange for a maximum sentence of seven years.

Judge Jonathan Karesh handed down that sentence this morning and Gonzalez-Becerra will have to pay unspecified restitution to the victims, Wagstaffe said. He received credit for 430 days in jail that will be subtracted off the seven-year sentence.

Photo: Felix Jeronimo Gonzalez-Becerra