California murder of six, including teenage mother and infant, likely gang or cartel related: sheriff
Sheriff described shootings as precise and targeted to ensure quick death
The Tulare County Sheriff said on Tuesday that a shooting that left six people dead, including a teenage mom and infant, in central California on Monday morning appears to have been gang or cartel related.
Sheriff Mike Boudreaux held a press conference on Tuesday to provide an update on the investigation into the shooting that happened just after 3:30 a.m. on Monday.
Deputies were called to a home on the 6800 Block of Harvest Road in Goshen, and when they arrived, they found two gunshot victims dead.
After searching the home, they located four other victims, KMPH-TV reported, and at the time investigators believed there were at least two suspects.
One of the six victims was still alive when deputies arrived but died a brief time later.
The victims were identified during the press conference as Rosa Parraz, 72; Eladio Parraz Jr., 52; Jennifer Analla, 50; Marcos Parraz, 19; Elyssa Parraz, 16 and Nycholas Parraz, 10-months-old.
A week prior to the shooting, a search warrant was conducted at the home for drugs, and according to Boudreaux, deputies found drugs, ammunition and weapons.
On Tuesday, Boudreaux said investigators working around the clock collected hundreds of pieces of evidence and he expects more to be discovered. He also asked businesses and residents nearby to check their surveillance video that was recorded between 3-5 a.m. on Monday morning, and if they find anything suspicious, to notify the sheriff’s office.
Boudreaux said the attack was targeted and the victims were shot in the head or other places the shooter knew would result in a quick death.
“This was not a random act of violence,” he said.
The sheriff also said the cartels are in Tulare County and central California, as are gangs. He did not want to point to one cartel or another, but instead wanted people to be aware of their surroundings.
Goshen is a farming community with a population of around 3,000 people, and while Boudreaux admitted to seeing some egregious acts during his tenure with the department, the killing of a 6-month-old baby and the style executed with precision ranked up at the top.
“It’s shocking to the nation…it’s shocking we live in a community where this danger exists,” he said.
The Tulare County Sheriff’s office is offering a $10,000 reward for information that leads to an arrest. Boudreaux said there is additional money coming in, and it is likely the reward will go up.
Anyone with information about this incident is asked to contact the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office at 559-733-6218. Tipsters can remain anonymous by calling or texting 559-725-4194 or through email at tcso@tipnow.com.
Who would execute a baby? Tulare sheriff said a drug cartel,
GOSHEN, Calif. —
The body of the 16-year-old girl was found crumpled outside the home, along with her dead 10-month-old son. It was clear to investigators who came upon the scene in the early hours of Monday morning that the young mother had tried to run away with her baby in her arms. But forensic evidence showed she had been caught before she could escape, and both she and her child were shot in the forehead from above, execution style.
Four other people, including a grandmother asleep in her bed, were killed with similar cold professionalism in the rampage at a family compound in the farm town of Goshen.
Speaking to reporters just a few hours after his deputies had responded to the violent scene, Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux characterized the massacre as a targeted attack by an unspecified drug cartel. “The drug cartel,” in his words. What else could explain the depravity of executing a baby?
In this impoverished, dusty outskirt of the San Joaquin Valley, and far beyond, many were left considering the same possibilities when grappling with who would commit such a heinous crime.
Boudreaux said investigators were looking for at least two shooters. The victims, many of whom were related and who ranged in age from 72 to 10 months, were shot in the head and “in places a shooter would know a quick death” would follow. “Going in and massacring an entire family goes above and beyond,” he said. “Which is why I continue to focus back on high-level gang-style execution or cartel-style execution, because this is not normal.”
Standing behind the sheriff as he spoke were agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the FBI — just a few of the many agencies the sheriff said have stepped in to assist Tulare County investigators in solving the crime.
The sheriff said that at least three people survived the rampage, which began when the assailants forced open a door to the home on Harvest Avenue, a residential pocket of houses circled by chain link fences in a mostly industrial area bordering State Route 99. One man in the main house hid by lying on the floor of a room while two women were in a trailer where the gunmen did not find them.
The survivors, the sheriff said, are “providing a great deal of information,” though he declined to reveal it. “I know a lot, but I can’t answer that question,” he said at one point, adding that the perpetrators could be watching his news conference.
The sheriff said his deputies arrived at the compound just seven minutes after the first 911 call, but the shooters were long gone by then.
(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
Boudreaux asked for help from the public in the investigation, requesting that neighbors, business owners and anyone in the area of the shooting check for video footage from early Monday, and share anything suspicious with law enforcement. Officials announced a $10,000 reward for information that would help move the investigation forward.
“We’re pulling out all stops, we’re turning over every rock,” he said.
The sheriff also noted that the property where the massacre occurred was a “known home to our department” for gang activity.
He said deputies had found guns, marijuana and methamphetamine at the home Jan. 3, following a parole compliance check.
They arrested one of the victims of the massacre, Eladio Parraz Jr., after that search, but said they did not believe their search was related to the violence, nor that Parraz, who was 52, was its intended target. They declined to say whether they believed they knew who the target was.
In court records filed in conjunction with the parole check, officials describe Eladio Parraz Jr. as a “documented Sureño gang member.” The Sureños are a group of loosely connected gangs that answer to the Mexican Mafia prison gang. He was detained on suspicion of being a felon in possession of ammunition after deputies found live rounds and spent shell casings from a shotgun and semi-automatic handgun on the ground, and was released a few days later.
But the sheriff said many of the people killed at the property had no gang affiliation. He named Rosa Parraz, the 72-year-old grandmother killed in her bed, along with Alissa Parraz, 16, the young mother, and her 10-month old baby, Nycholas, as “innocent victims.” (The Sheriff’s Office initially released the incorrect spelling of Alissa Parraz’s first name, as well as incorrect ages for her and her son.)
Other victims identified Tuesday were Marcos Parraz, 19, and Jennifer Analla, 50.
“I cannot comprehend it,” Alissa Parraz’s grandfather told ABC 30 News. “I can’t understand who can just kill a baby like that. I can’t wrap my head around it. How can someone be a monster and do that?”
The slayings have stunned the quiet town of Goshen, a mostly Latino community of about 5,000 just outside Visalia, and brought a wave of fear to the area. Since at least the 1970s, Tulare County has played an outsized role in the transnational drug trade between Mexico and U.S. markets, which has repeatedly brought violence to the Central Valley county.
As news of the massacre sank in, a palpable air of trepidation seemed to descend on the neighborhood where the violence occurred. On three occasions, residents approached a Times reporter in the area, asking him to move his unfamiliar car from near their homes. All declined to identify themselves, though one explained that they didn’t want a local gang to think they had spoken to the police.
Three Tulare County sheriff’s cruisers sat parked in the middle of Harvest Avenue on Tuesday morning, which remained blocked between Ivy Road and Highway 68.
Mike Alrahimi, owner of a general store around the block from the site of Monday’s shooting, said he was horrified by the violence.
Alrahimi said he didn’t know the family but figured they must have been in his store at some point. Nothing so violent has happened in the neighborhood in the 39 years he has lived in the area.
“I feel bad for the family, for the neighborhood,” Alrahimi, 65, said. “Everyone is sad.”
Brutal killing of California family a ‘clear message’ from the cartel, sheriff warns: ‘They were targeted’
Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux calls out the ‘open border’ and soft-on-crime policies in the state
The California sheriff investigating the slaughter of an entire family that included a teen mom and baby said the killings are undoubtedly cartel related as officials continue to piece together details from the brutal massacre.
Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux joined “America’s Newsroom” Thursday with an update on the search for suspects and a warning on how “failed” policies are fueling a surge in violence.
“This is an intentional slaughter and massacre, no one was supposed to be left alive,” Boudreaux told Bill Hemmer and Dana Perino. “They went through this house methodically, very slowly. They made sure that they were going to kill everyone in that home.”
“When you slaughter, when you shoot a 16-year-old mother in the head and a 10-month-old child in the head, that is a very clear message to everyone that this was a cartel-style shooting, execution, and these types of things with our unsecure open border, with our soft on crime approach here in California, this is the result of some of that failed policy,” he continued.
A 16-year-old mother was fatally shot, alongside her son and other members of her family, in Goshen, California, on Monday. (Fox News)
Members of an entire family were slain in Goshen, California, early Monday, with the victims ranging in age from 10 months to 72 years old. They were Rosa Parraz, 72; Eladio Parraz Jr., 52; Jennifer Analla, 50; Marcos Parraz, 19; Elyssa Parraz, 16 and Nycholas Parraz, 10-months-old.
A week prior to the shooting, a search warrant was conducted at the home for drugs, and according to Boudreaux, deputies found drugs, ammunition and weapons.
“What we’re experiencing is high-level gang structure violence, who are married to the cartel,” Boudreaux said. “The cartel brings the drugs into our area and the gangs distribute them. They’re partners, and this slaughter of a family, an entire family, this wasn’t just the killing of a rival gang member or a fellow gang member. This was a slaughter massacre of an entire family.”
“They were targeted, and this was a message being sent,” he continued.
Although it has been widely known gangs and cartels are active in the central California area, Boudreaux said the brutal nature of this incident has rocked the community at its core.
“This small migrant farm community, they’re in a state of shock and a state of fear,” Boudreaux said. “However they all knew this existed.”
Anyone with information on the incident is asked to contact the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office at 559-733-6218. Tipsters can remain anonymous by calling or texting 559-725-4194 or through email at tcso@tipnow.com.
Suspected hitman stood over California mom holding baby, killed both at home linked to drugs and guns
‘Deliberate, intentional and horrific,’ sheriff says of shootings
Authorities released more details about the six people gunned down at a California home linked to drugs and guns, as well as the nature in which they were killed.
A shooter stood over a 16-year-old mother clutching her 10-month-old baby and pumped bullets into their heads in a brazen attack early Monday morning.
Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux said the teenager was fleeing the violence when the killers caught up to her outside the home in Goshen, a central California community of about 3,000 residents in the agricultural San Joaquin Valley, and shot the young mother and her child “assassination-style.”
“None of this was by accident,” Boudreaux said during a news conference Tuesday. “It was deliberate, intentional and horrific.”
Photo collage of all six victims of the Goshen, CA, family murders. Local law enforcement believes the murders were targeted attack from either gangs or cartels. (KMPH)
The victims were identified during the press conference as Rosa Parraz, 72; Eladio Parraz Jr., 52; Jennifer Analla, 50; Marcos Parraz, 19; Elyssa Parraz, 16 and Nycholas Parraz, 10 months old.
“I can’t wrap my head around what kind of monster would do this,” the baby’s great-grandfather, Samuel Pina, told The Associated Press.
Three people survived and will be interviewed by authorities. They include a man who hid in the home as the killings happened.
GOSHEN, CA – JANUARY 16: Tulare County Sheriff crime unit investigates the scene where six people, including a 6-month old baby, her teenage mother and an elderly woman, were killed in a Central Valley farming community in what the local sheriff said was likely a targeted attack by a drug cartel on Monday, Jan. 16, 2023 in Goshen, CA. The massacre occurred around 3:30 a.m. in and around a residence in the Tulare County town of Goshen near Visalia. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)“He was in such a state of fear that all he could do was hold the door, hoping he was not the next victim,” Boudreaux said.
Authorities said they were searching for two suspects and offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to their arrests.
“I know certain things that I am not able to release right now,” he said. “They’re watching what’s happening today as well.”
Boudreaux said there is a history of gang and drug activity at the home, but that not everyone who lives there was involved in gangs or drugs.
TCSO deputies were called to a home in the 6800 Block of Harvest Road in Goshen for multiple shots heard just after 3:30 a.m. Jan. 16, 2023. (Tulare County Sheriff’s Office)
A narcotics warrant was served at the home the week prior, Boudreaux said. Eladio Parraz was arrested and bailed out four days later.
“This was a cartel-like execution. We are not eliminating the idea that the cartel was involved,” Boudreaux said. “We do have cartel in Tulare County.”
Editor’s note: The name of the 16-year-old mother killed has been reported as Elyssa Parraz by authorities, and Alissa Parraz by family.
Fox News’ Greg Wehner and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
