The family of the teenage mother and her baby killed Monday in a shooting that killed six people in a California farming town is shocked by the attack, which police are equating to a drug cartel-style execution: " It doesn't fit in my head what kind of monster can do something like that," Samuel Pina, the young woman's grandfather, told The Associated Press news agency.
Two officers stretcher out one of the fatalities that left six dead in Goshen, Tulare County, California, on January 16, 2023.Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
The man identified his granddaughter, Alissa Parraz, 17;
and her great-grandson, Nycholas Nolan Parraz, 6 months old, among the deceased.
They were shot in the head, Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux said Monday, adding that authorities are looking for two people suspected in the massacre.
The crimes occurred early Monday morning at a home in Goshen, a small town of 3,000 mostly Latino residents located in the agricultural San Joaquin Valley, 35 miles from Fresno.
Officers responded to a shooting alert and found three people dead on the street and three other victims inside the home, one of them a man who underwent heart massage but died at an area hospital. .
Members of the Tulare County Sheriff's Criminal Unit collect evidence of crimes in Goshen, Calif., on Jan. 16, 2023.Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
The sheriff stressed that the shooting was not a random act of violence and that "a family was targeted" by the killers, though he did not reveal the identity of the victims or whether they were related.
Two women managed to survive the attack by hiding in a trailer and saw two men enter the home, the sheriff said.
In his opinion, the perpetrators of the attack belong to a drug trafficking organization.
“I think it is specifically related to a cartel.
The level of violence… This is not done by someone from just any gang,” she told the Los Angeles Times.
The "shape and speed" of the attacks suggests they are experienced killers, Boudreaux said.
“If they specifically shoot everybody in the head, they know what they're doing [and] they're comfortable with what they're doing,” he said.
Three of the fatalities were found on the street and another three inside the house.
The shooting occurred in Goshen, California on January 16, 2023.Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
According to the aforementioned newspaper, the production of methamphetamines and the cultivation of legal and illegal marijuana has skyrocketed in that area in recent decades.
In addition, some of the most prominent Mexican drug traffickers have ties to the county, such as José María Guizar Valencia, a former leader of the Zetas, who was born there.
Tulare County, according to the newspaper, has long played a leading role in the transnational business of transporting drugs from Mexico to markets in the United States.
The area, through which Highway 99 passes, is made up of hundreds of acres of open land with little police presence and highly mobile farmworkers, which has served as a "paradise" for smugglers since the mid-1970s.
Police last week executed a drug-related search warrant at the house where the massacre occurred, Boudreaux said.
An officer, camera in hand, searches for evidence of the six crimes that occurred in Goshen, California, on January 16, 2023. Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
Tulare County Supervisor Eddie Valero called the deaths "everyone's worst nightmare."
"These senseless acts of violence, especially with babies, children and young people, have no place in our communities," he rejected in a statement.
