Police in southern California have arrested five suspects who are believed to be responsible for killing six people and leaving behind a grisly scene at a remote crossroads in the Mojave desert last week.
The victims were likely shot to death in a dispute over illicit marijuana, the San Bernadino Sheriff’s Department stated Monday evening, though the exact motive behind the slayings is still unknown.
Police learned of the Jan. 23 shooting when one of the gunshot victims, Franklin Noel Bonilla, called 911 saying he had been shot but didn’t know where he was, according to a press release. Then the call ended.
Police “tracked the phone via latitude and longitude coordinates to a remote area in the unincorporated area of Adelanto near Lessing Avenue,” Sgt. Michael Warrick said during a Monday news conference.
When authorities arrived, about 30 minutes after the 911 call, they stepped onto a disturbing crime scene: five dead bodies and an SUV riddled with bullet holes.
The next morning, a sixth victim was discovered. Bonilla was found dead a short distance away from the rest.
Police revealed that four of the victims had been “partially burned.” Sgt. Warrick added that the victims had been burned “at the location, by the suspects.”
On Sunday, authorities arrested five men between the ages of 24 and 34, and seized several firearms and additional evidence in the case.
“Through extensive investigation, investigators determined the victims had arranged to meet at the location for a marijuana transaction,” San Bernadino police wrote. “Five subjects, identified as Toniel Baez-Duarte, Mateo Baez-Duarte, Jose Nicolas Hernandez Sarabia, Jose Gregorio Hernandez Sarabia, and Jose Manuel Burgos Parra, arrived at the location and for reasons still under investigation shot the six victims.”
“We are confident we have arrested all the suspects in this case,” Sgt. Warrick said.
The men have been booked for murder and are being held without bail pending review of the case by the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office. Police did not describe how the investigation led to them to the five suspects.
Four of the victims were identified as: Baldemar Mondragon-Albarran, 34, of Adelanto; Franklin Noel Bonilla, 22, of Hesperia; Kevin Dariel Bonilla, 25, of Hesperia; and a 45-year-old man whose name was withheld pending family notification. Coroner’s officials are still trying to identify the remaining two men.
Police were not able to comment on whether the violence was cartel-related.
“There’s certain things at the scene that show a level of violence that obviously raises some interesting questions for us,” Warrick said.
San Bernardino County Sherrif Shannon Dicus said that violence related to the illegal marijuana market has been rising in the area.
Dicus called the black market “a plague” that results in violence, and he called on lawmakers to reform cannabis laws to “keep legalization but revert to harsher penalties for users of illegal pot.”
California voters legalized recreational marijuana in 2016, and the state has become the world’s largest legal cannabis marketplace since then, with billions in annual sales. But the illegal market continues to thrive.
Last year alone, San Bernardino County served 400 search warrants for illegal marijuana and recovered more than 650,000 cannabis plants and US$370 million, Dicus said.
— With files from The Associated Press
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