Gov. Gavin Newsom commuted Arthur Battle’s sentence, making him eligible for parole after nearly two decades in prison. In 2006, multiple shooters fired into a Kia in a Hollywood Video parking lot in Sacramento, killing 19-year-old Vardan Abramyan. Investigators linked the getaway car to acquaintances who agreed to kill Abramyan’s father for small payments: $3,000 for one participant and $500 each for two others. Juries convicted four men of first-degree murder and sentenced each to life without parole. Abramyan said he arranged the killing because of alleged physical and emotional abuse; others argued the motive was financial. While incarcerated, Battle earned a GED and took college courses.
The unusual case made headlines in 2006 when a trip to a Hollywood Video near the Del Paso Country Club in Sacramento turned deadly. As 19-year-old Vardan Abramyan headed inside to rent a movie, his father, Norik Abramyan, 45, waited in their Kia. Gunshots rang out in the parking lot as multiple shooters fired into the vehicle, killing Abramyan.
On the stand, Abramyan said his father, an unemployed church pastor at the time of his murder, was physically and emotionally abusive. He said that during one occasion, he tried to intervene as his father assaulted his mother; he showed the jury a scar that he said came from his father then attacking him with a kitchen knife. Abramyan testified that he had paid to have his father killed, convinced that the man would kill someone in his family if he didn't. "I just wanted him gone," Abramyan said.
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