Ueta Muasika’s son was 2 when he was wounded in the 2020 attack and was among relatives heard at sentencing years later.
SAN MATEO, Calif. — A boy who survived being shot during the ambush that killed his father as a toddler was among the family members whose loss returned to a San Mateo courtroom nearly six years later, when two men convicted in the attack were sentenced to life in prison without parole.
John Talia Paasi, 33, and Isileli Mahe, 34, received the life terms for the Oct. 30, 2020, killing of Ueta Savelio Muasika Jr., 30. A jury convicted both men in March after a 24-day trial, finding them guilty of first-degree murder and determining that they had lain in wait before the attack. Muasika’s son, then 2, was also shot and survived. The boy’s presence in the case, first as an injured toddler and later as a member of the family confronting the consequences of the crime, marked the passage of time between the shooting and sentencing.
Police were called to the 1600 block of Eleanor Drive in San Mateo on the morning of the shooting. Officers found Muasika in the driveway with multiple gunshot wounds and his small son injured nearby. Authorities said Muasika had been preparing to leave with the child when the attack occurred. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Officers and paramedics treated the boy, who was taken to a trauma center with a gunshot wound to the face. San Mateo police later said he recovered from his injuries.
The immediate scene offered only the beginning of a case that would take years to resolve. No suspect was arrested that morning, and detectives began what police later described as a methodical investigation lasting about 18 months. The search eventually carried investigators to opposite parts of the country. On April 18, 2022, authorities arrested Paasi in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Mahe in Honolulu, Hawaii. San Mateo detectives worked with local and federal agencies to take both men into custody and begin the process of returning them to California.
By the time the arrests were announced, police said they believed the shooting grew out of another family’s loss. Paasi’s grandmother, Susana Tonga, had died in a deliberately set San Mateo house fire in February 2019. Muasika’s cousin, Fifita Tau, was prosecuted in that case and later convicted. Investigators said Paasi and Mahe targeted Muasika in retaliation for Tonga’s death. Authorities also stressed a fact that separated the two crimes: they had no evidence that Muasika himself took part in the arson.
That alleged motive meant the child was wounded during an attack prosecutors described as revenge against his father for somebody else’s actions. Police said Paasi and Muasika had known one another for years. The prosecution’s theory was that the defendants waited for Muasika and attacked when he was outside with his son. Fourteen shots were fired, according to authorities. The number of shots and the lying-in-wait finding became part of the evidence supporting the prosecution’s contention that the killing was deliberate and planned.
The long delay before trial meant the boy grew up while the prosecution remained unresolved. He was about 4 when the arrests were made and several years older by the time a jury heard the evidence. During that period, the defendants remained accused rather than convicted, and their lawyers contested the state’s case. Mahe’s attorney, Brandon Douglass, told reporters at the start of trial that his client had no reason to want Muasika killed and maintained that Mahe was innocent. Paasi likewise denied responsibility and had pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutors faced a significant evidentiary issue: they could not tell jurors which defendant actually fired the weapon. Rather than assign the shots to one man without proof, they argued that Paasi and Mahe acted together and were both legally responsible. The case proceeded under an aiding-and-abetting theory, which can impose criminal liability on a person who intentionally assists a crime even if another participant carries out the physical act. Jurors accepted the prosecution’s account and convicted both defendants, including on the special circumstance of lying in wait.
The verdict changed the legal posture of the case and gave Muasika’s family its first certainty about punishment. Because of the special finding, both defendants faced sentences that would keep them in prison for life. At the sentencing hearing, San Mateo County Superior Court Judge Michael K. Wendler heard victim-impact statements from five members of Muasika’s family, according to reporting on the proceeding. The group included Muasika’s surviving son, who was no longer the 2-year-old described in the first police statements after the shooting.
Wendler denied requests for a new trial and sentenced each defendant to life without the possibility of parole. Mahe received an additional six years. Paasi received an additional 12 years, with a prior felony strike affecting his punishment. The court also ordered restitution and other requirements reported after the hearing. The sentences meant that, absent a successful appeal or other post-conviction relief, neither man will be released on parole.
Muasika’s family had already described what the guilty verdict meant for the boy. His widow, Leslie Munoz, said after the convictions that she could finally answer her son when he asked whether the men responsible would ever get out of prison. The comment reflected a concern that had followed the child through much of his life. He had survived the physical injury, but the criminal case remained unresolved through his early childhood until the jury’s decision and the later sentencing.
Muasika was known in the Bay Area music community as Juice Boi and had performed with the group Cutthroat Mode. Police identified him by both his legal name and stage name when announcing the arrests. But the circumstances of his death placed his role as a father at the center of the criminal case. Authorities said he was outside with his child, preparing to leave, when the defendants struck. The son’s injuries were therefore not a later consequence separate from the killing; they were part of the same burst of gunfire that prosecutors said was planned for Muasika.
The family’s experience also became intertwined with two criminal cases that began before the child was old enough to understand them. Tonga’s death in the 2019 arson led to Tau’s prosecution. Muasika’s death the following year led to the case against Paasi and Mahe. Investigators said revenge connected the events, but the prosecutions kept responsibility separate. Tau was held accountable for the arson; Paasi and Mahe were convicted for the later ambush. No evidence established that Muasika was responsible for Tonga’s death.
Sentencing does not necessarily end the litigation. Douglass has said he intends to appeal Mahe’s conviction, and appellate courts could later review claims raised by the defense. No decision from such an appeal has been reported. For now, the trial court judgments stand, and both defendants face life in prison without parole while Muasika’s son continues growing up after surviving the attack that killed his father.
Author note: Last updated August 28, 2026.