Six killed in attack on family

Among dead, a 16-year-old mom and her 10-month-old baby

VISALIA, Calif. — 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 in a central California farming community that left six dead at a home linked to drugs and guns, a sheriff said Tuesday.

Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux said the teenager was fleeing violence early Monday when the killers caught up to her outside a 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.”

Boudreaux said that the home is linked to gangs and drugs but on Tuesday he walked back his earlier comments to reporters that the violence was likely a cartel hit, saying that investigators are still looking into that possibility.

He added that not everyone who was shot was a drug dealer or gang member — and said that among the victims believed to be innocent are the teen, her grandmother, and of course, the baby.

A $10,000 reward is being offered for information leading to the suspects’ arrests.

Samuel Pina said his granddaughter, 16-year-old Alissa Parraz, and her 10-month-old baby, Nycholas Nolan Parraz, were among those killed.

“I can’t wrap my head around what kind of monster would do this,” he told The Associated Press on Monday.

Pina said Parraz and her baby were living with her father’s side of the family in Goshen, and that her dad’s uncle, her dad’s cousin, her grandmother and her great-grandmother were also killed.

He said the family is in shock.

“It comes in big waves,” he said. Boudreaux told the Los Angeles Times it appeared Alissa Parraz and her child were shot in the head as she tried to run away. A deputy found the bodies of the infant, cradled in his mother’s arms, in a ditch outside the home. An elderly woman appeared to be shot in the head while she slept.

Boudreaux told the newspaper that he believes the violence is connected to a cartel, but he did not name which organization investigators are looking into.

“If (they) are specifically shooting everyone in the head, they know what they are doing … (and) they are comfortable with what they are doing,” the sheriff told the Times.

Deputies responded around 3:30 a.m. Monday to reports of multiple shots fired at the residence in unincorporated Goshen, some 35 miles southeast of Fresno.

“Actually the report was that an active shooter was in the area because of the number of shots that were being fired,” Boudreaux said at the news conference.

Deputies found two victims dead in the street and a third person fatally shot in the doorway of the residence, Boudreaux said.

Three more victims were found inside the home, including a man who was still alive but later died at a hospital, he said.