Claiming His Mom Was Possessed, Son Sentenced To Life For Grisly Dining Table MurderMaria Hernandez Sat, November 7, 2026 at 5:18 PM UTC
Ronald Joseph Kirk
A welfare check in late 2024 unraveled into a grisly crime scene that ended a family’s desperate struggle and sent an Oregon man away for life.
Ronald Kirk, 38, will spend at least the next quarter-century behind bars after being convicted of second-degree murder for the fatal shooting of his mother, 61-year-old Rosa Leyva.
When worried friends and relatives lost contact with Leyva in November 2024, they urged police to check on her home. Officers who stepped inside were met with a chilling sight: Leyva sat lifeless at her own dining room table with a gunshot wound to the head, her body concealed beneath pillowcases.
Detectives soon pieced together the sequence of events. Kirk had pulled the trigger a day before anyone arrived.
At trial, prosecutors detailed the erratic descent that led to the violence. Struggling with severe drug and alcohol addiction, Kirk had convinced himself that his mother was possessed. Leyva had sensed the danger closing in—shortly before her death, she reached out to police for protection after ordering her son to move out. Prosecutors described Kirk as “volatile, dangerous, and frequently drunk or high on meth.”
Police Lights (File)
At the sentencing hearing, the courtroom fell silent as Leyva’s nephew, Tyler Leyva, confronted the reality of what his family had lost.
“My aunt was murdered by her own son,” he told the court. “Someone I grew up with, someone who was once close to us, and someone I never imagined would be responsible for something so horrific.”
Kirk was sentenced to life in prison, with a mandatory 25 years to serve before he is eligible for parole.
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Claiming His Mom Was Possessed, Son Sentenced To Life For Grisly Dining Table Murder
Source: Crime
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