15-years-to-life sentence for Toquerville man who killed neighbor

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ST. GEORGE — A Toquerville man who killed his neighbor during a drug and depression fueled crime spree when he was 17 has been sentenced to prison.

Joshua David Canfield, who turned 20 this week, was sentenced Thursday to 15 years to life in prison for the March 2014 murder of Geraldine Bommarito, 58. There is an additional year on the sentence for a weapons enhancement and all additional sentences in the case will run concurrently, his attorney, Edward Flint, said.

"He wants to better himself," said Flint, who described his client's commitment to education and passion for music and poetry.

Canfield pleaded guilty in January to murder and aggravated robbery, first-degree felonies, as well as additional counts of charges of arson, vehicle theft and assault on a police officer stemming from the crime spree.

With medication and treatment at the Utah State Hospital, Canfield has accepted responsibility for taking the life of the woman who once offered him work and baked him cookies, Flint said Thursday. He is once again becoming the person his parents and siblings remember before drugs and mental illness took hold years ago.

"I think everybody today could see that he looked completely different than he used to and that he was acting completely appropriately in court, even in a stressful situation," Flint said. "These were all things that had caused problems in some of the early hearings in the case at a time when his competency was an issue."

Canfield had attempted to overdose and kill himself on March 18, 2014, just days before his 18th birthday, according to Flint. When he awoke from the attempt, he set out on a violent string of events in which he shot and killed Bommarito in her home, stole and then burned her car, and fought officers who attempted to arrest him hours later, the lawyer said.

Neighbors said Canfield lived in a camp trailer outside his parents' home and just down the street from Bommarito.

In his March 2014 booking mugshot, Canfield wore a neck brace and had what appears to be a puncture and slicing wound across his neck, the result of two separate suicide attempts, police said. He was found incompetent to face the charges in May 2015.