An Idaho teenager, who admitted to committing murder, expressed to the victim’s family that he accepts any punishment deemed fit for his crime.

Rolan Delacruz, 16, faced charges as an adult over the 2024 murder of 18-year-old Dax Richins. Delacruz, alongside 18-year-old Alexander Garcia, deceitfully led Richins to a secluded location where they attacked him with knives, beat him, and afterwards dismembered and buried his remains. At the time of the crime, Garcia was 17 and has also pled guilty to murder, receiving a sentence of 25 years to life on October 8.

This past Monday, Delacruz was sentenced following his guilty plea. A judge in Gooding County handed down a sentence of 23 years to life, opting to send him directly to the Idaho Department of Corrections rather than a juvenile facility.

Documents from the arrest, accessed by local ABC station KIVI, recount how Delacruz and Garcia picked up Richins from a library parking lot in Jerome on June 24, 2024, under the guise of heading to a bonfire. Instead, they drove him to a deserted area in Gooding County, where they brutally attacked him with brass knuckles and knives, resulting in his death.

The following day, the pair returned to the site, dismembering Richins’ body to remove identifiable parts before burying the remains in a shallow grave. Investigators revealed that Garcia had recorded Snapchat videos discussing the act of “physically deforming a human skull” and had texted a friend admitting to “killing someone.”

Investigators also found a bone in Garcia’s truck, which he said he “took as a trophy.”

Richins’ skull was found in September 2024 on the Snake River Canyon rim. His body was not far away.

Richins’ father, Rodney Richins, was in the courtroom for the sentencing and said, “It felt so senseless to me how these young men could take the life of my son and not think of the consequences it would have on both my family and theirs. I can’t imagine what Dax was thinking when his friends turned on him, attacked him, and stabbed him to death.”

Before learning his sentence, Delacruz also read a statement to the court that expressed his remorse. The teen told the court, “Every night, I relive that night where [Alexander] and I killed Dax. Every night, I’m not able to go to sleep because of it. I know what I did was wrong, and not only wrong, but a little psychotic. I know you’re thinking, ‘Good, let him suffer.’ I agree with you. Let me suffer.”

Gooding County District Court Judge Rosemary Emory sentenced Delacruz to 23 years to life in the Idaho Department of Corrections.

Another defendant in connection with the case, 23-year-old Nathaniel Felix, previously pleaded not guilty to accessory to murder and destruction of evidence. He is scheduled to go on trial on Feb. 3, 2026.