A homeless man has been sentenced to 55 years to life in prison for strangling the homeless woman he was rooming with at a Bakersfield motel.

Eldrick Richmond claimed he killed Delenna Ruiz in self defense last October after she went through his stuff at the Town and Country Motel on Union Avenue, but Deputy District Attorney Courtney Lewis says the coroner’s report shows Ruiz had been trying to fight him off before she was strangled.

The two had met only hours before getting the room to escape the cold.

Kelli Pierce