Man convicted of killing woman, pushing her body from car The green Mercury Cougar had its high beams on and turned left without signaling. That's why a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy pulled over the driver, Juan Diego Valencia, just after 11 p.m. on Sept. But before the deputy could get out of the patrol car, the routine traffic stop took a bloody turn: Valencia, prosecutors said, shot his female passenger in the head and sped off. During the ensuing pursuit, Valencia paused at an intersection long enough to push the body of Selene Mayoral, 24, from the car. In a Compton courtroom last week, jurors cringed as they watched a video of Mayoral's limp body tumbling to the pavement before the Mercury drove off, a trail of lights and sirens following close behind. On Tuesday, the jury convicted Valencia, 31, of second-degree murder. Given his record and the latest convictions, Valencia faces 47 years to life in prison, Deputy Dist. Tony Aguilar said. According to Aguilar, in the months prior to her death, Mayoral had been living with her parents in Cudahy. She had recently completed a stint in rehab and had gotten a job working for an electronics manufacturer, where she met Valencia. The two struck up a friendship and soon started using meth together, he said. On the night she was killed, Mayoral had called and texted her mother, Aguilar said. She asked her mother to pick her up at a friend's place. She said she didn't want to hang out with Valencia anymore. She told her mother he wouldn't let her leave, Aguilar said. Hours later, Mayoral called her mother to say she didn't want to be picked up after all. Her mother testified that she heard her daughter go quiet and then scream before the call ended. Valencia had been holding her "hostage for three hours" and beating her, Aguilar said. He added that Valencia must have suspected that Mayoral's mother had called the police. In his closing arguments, Aguilar said Valencia, a gang member, shot Mayoral in a drug-addled display of toughness. Valencia's attorney contended that Mayoral's killing was an accident - that in a meth-fueled panic, Valencia fumbled with the gun in his waistband, pushing it toward Mayoral across the front seat, and it had gone off. "What really happened in that car - that's what's at issue," she said. Upon realizing that Mayoral had been hit, he sped away, Logan said. Aguilar called the idea that Mayoral's death was an accident "incredible," given the trajectory of the bullet, which passed through the passenger window and made a hole in a metal gate in front of a Lynwood elementary school where the deputy pulled them over. Although Aguilar argued that the slaying was gang-related, the jury rejected that allegation. Valencia is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 30.