Sacramento man arrested in killing of two adults, two juveniles
SACRAMENTO — Police arrested a 56-year-old man Friday on suspicion that he killed two adults and two juveniles in a quiet Northern California neighborhood.
Authorities did not release the names of the victims, but friends and family of a young family that lived in the Sacramento house feared the worst.
Rita Munoz, who lives in the neighborhood, said her grandchildren played with an 11-year-old boy and 14year-old girl who lived with their mother in the house. Munoz said her neighbor’s mother arrived at the house shortly after the bodies were found Thursday and was heard crying.
Sacramento police declined to discuss the suspect’s relationship with the victims and said they haven’t determined a motive.
“It’s a horrible thing,” Munoz said.
Police originally detained Salvador Vasquez-Oliva in San Francisco about 90 miles away on Thursday afternoon and formally arrested him Friday morning.
He was being held Friday in the Sacramento County Jail, police spokesman Sgt. Bryce Heinlein said.
The four victims were discovered Thursday morning when police broke into the home after a relative reported that something might be wrong.
Vasquez-Oliva was quickly singled out by investigators on Thursday. Police said he is from Sacramento, but records show is also is associated with an apartment in San Francisco, located near the University of San Francisco and six blocks from where police found him. The building is in a nice neighborhood, but it is worn and rundown. There was no answer at the door, though a light remained on inside.
The California Employment Development Department, which administers the state unemployment checks, said it has employed Vasquez-Oliva as an office technician since 2014.
Heinlein said he was likely known to the victims, adding: “Preliminarily this does not appear to be a random act.”
The single-story beige home with sculpted shrubbery where the bodies were found has a basketball hoop in a driveway that police blocked with yellow crime scene tape. It’s located in a tree-lined residential neighborhood of neatly maintained homes near a church.