Authorities in southern California have arrested five men in connection to the grisly killings of six people discovered shot – and some of whom were also burned – last week in a remote area of the Mojave Desert.
All six had apparent fatal gunshot wounds – and four of the bodies had also been burned, San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Office Sergeant Michael Warrick said during a Monday evening (Tuesday morning AEDT) news conference.
The killings appear to be connected to illegal marijuana, authorities said, though they did not release many details, as the case is being reviewed by the district attorney’s office.
The victims, all men, were discovered last Tuesday night after dispatchers received a 911 call from one of them. Warrick said the man told them in Spanish he had been shot but did not know where he was.
“Dispatchers tracked the phone via latitude and longitude coordinates to a remote area in unincorporated Adelanto,” Warrick said. Adelanto, in the desert, is about 60 miles north-east of Los Angeles.
Deputies with the sheriff’s office and an air operations unit from the California Highway Patrol searched the area until they discovered a crime scene with “multiple gunshot wound victims” and two vehicles, one of which had multiple gunshots in it, Warrick said.
Four of the victims were discovered with severe burns, a fifth man was found inside a vehicle and a sixth man – believed to be the one who called 911 – was found a little further away with a gunshot wound. Aerial footage from CNN affiliates last week showed remnants of what appeared to be a brutal crime scene.
Four of the victims have so far been identified, authorities said. They are Baldemar Mondragon-Albarran, 34; Franklin Noel Bonilla, 22, who authorities identified as the 911 caller; Kevin Dariel Bonilla, 25; and a 45-year-old man whose next of kin is still being notified, according to a news release from the sheriff’s office.
Authorities served multiple search warrants throughout the investigation and recovered several firearms and other evidence, the news release said.
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The five suspects in the killings, who were arrested on Sunday, were identified as Toniel Baez-Duarte, 34; Mateo Baez-Duarte, 24; Jose Nicolas Hernandez Sarabia, 33; Jose Gregorio Hernandez Sarabia, 34; and Jose Manuel Burgos Parra, 26. CNN is working to determine whether any of the suspects have attorneys.
Investigators believe the victims had arranged to meet at the remote location for a “marijuana transaction,” but the suspects arrived at the locations and shot at them for “reasons still under investigation,” according to the sheriff’s office.
“We are confident that this appears to be a dispute over marijuana, which resulted in the murders,” Warrick said. “Our investigators combed through evidence collected at the scene and followed up on information provided by the community.”
The investigation is still ongoing, the sergeant said. All five suspects remain in custody with no bail pending a review of the case from the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office, he added.
When asked whether the case appeared to be gang or cartel-related, Warrick said while this is still an open probe, “there’s certain things at the scene that show a level of violence that obviously raises some interesting questions for us, but at this point in the investigation, we can’t comment on if we believe if this is cartel-related or not.”
San Bernardino County Sheriff Shannon D Dicus said the illegal marijuana market in the area has led to brutal crime scenes including killings, sharing that in the last year alone, marijuana enforcement teams served more than 400 search warrants for illegal marijuana grows and recovered more than 650,000 marijuana plants and $US370 million (about $560 million).
“It looks like illicit marijuana was the driving force behind these murders, and that’s all we really know at this point.”