Two people were arrested early on Friday, one of them after an exchange of shots with the authorities, accused of the massacre that cost the lives of six people from the same family in January, including a mother and a baby, in a home in central California, according to the Tulare County sheriff, who attributed the crime to a conflict between rival gangs.
Police Chief Mike Boudreaux said that Noah David Beard, 25, was arrested and Ángel
Nanu
Uriarte, 35, was wounded in the shootout with federal agents and is hospitalized but is expected to survive and later go into police custody. .
"I'm glad we were able to put both men behind bars," he explained.
The suspects and at least two family members of the victims have long histories of gang violence, but the motive for the shooting "isn't exactly clear," Boudreaux said at a news conference at the Visalia Sheriff's Department.
"As everyone can imagine, this is exactly what it appears to be, gang rivalry between Norteños and Sureños. Two of the victims were known Sureños," the sheriff said.
The two detainees are presumably Norteños, a rival criminal gang.
The Tulare District Attorney's Office filed six counts of murder and other crimes against the suspects, who had been under round-the-clock police surveillance since January 23, Boudreaux added.
The six victims, including a teenage mother and her baby, were fatally shot Jan. 16 in rural Goshen, a community of 3,000 in the San Joaquin Valley.
The victims were identified as: Rosa Parraz, 72 years old;
Eladio Parraz, Jr., 52;
Jennifer Analla, 49;
Marcos Parraz, 19;
Alissa Parraz, 16;
and Nycholas Parraz, 10 months.
The sheriff said the arrests stem from Operation Nightmare, in which search warrants were served at locations in Goshen and Visalia, and about eight cells of inmates associated with a prison gang were searched at five state prisons.
Surveillance video released by authorities Friday showed a teenager running outside and placing a baby on the other side of a fence, then jumping over it herself.
According to authorities, Beard executed the teenager and baby, found dead in the street, with a shot to the back of the head.
Among the adult victims was a woman who was found kneeling and shot in the head, according to authorities.
The sheriff said Alissa Parraz had been granted full custody of the baby after it spent months in the foster system.
The two met on January 13, three days before they were killed.
