6 people, including mother and baby, killed in Tulare County
LOS ANGELES — Six people, including a 6-month old baby, her teenage mother and an elderly woman, were killed Monday in a Tulare County farming community in what the sheriff said was likely a targeted attack by a drug cartel.
The massacre occurred around 3:30 a.m. in and around three neighboring residences in the town of Goshen near Visalia. Authorities said they were searching for two suspects and that the killings may have been related to a search warrant carried out last week at one of the homes that resulted in one arrest and the seizure of guns, marijuana and methamphetamine.
“I think it’s specifically connected to the cartel,” Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux told the Los Angeles Times. “The level of violence ... this was not your run-of-themill low-end gang member.”
Authorities did not release the names or ages of all the victims, but said it appeared some were family members.
Several were shot in the head, including the baby, Boudreaux said. A sheriff’s deputy responding to reports of wild gunfire found the infant cradled in the arms of her 17-year-old mother in a ditch outside the homes. Both had gunshot wounds to the head.
The third female victim, an elderly woman found in a bed in one residence, also was shot in the head.
“It appeared she was shot in her sleep,” Boudreaux said.
Three men also were killed. One was alive when deputies arrived and was given CPR and taken to the hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries.
It was unclear whether the man arrested last week during the search by a narcotics unit of the Sheriff’s Department was one of the victims, Boudreaux said. DNA testing will be required to identify at least one of the men because of damage done to his face by the gun or guns used, the sheriff said.
Two women survived the attack by hiding in a trailer home. Boudreaux said they told investigators that people on the property saw intruders approaching on surveillance cameras.
“They could see two men sneaking onto the property ... but by the time they came on (the video feed), it was too late to do anything.”
The door of one home had been kicked or pushed in and one man shot in the doorway. It appeared the teenage mother was trying to run away with her child when killed, Boudreaux said.
Investigators did not release the names or descriptions of the suspects.
The “manner and swiftness” of the murders suggested experienced killers, Boudreaux said.
“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 said.
For a small agricultural area of less than half a million people, Tulare County has long played an outsized role in the transnational business of moving drugs from Mexico to markets around the United States.
Bisected by the 99 Freeway, with a sparse law enforcement presence, acres of wide open land and a heavily mobile population of farmworkers, the area has served as a smugglers paradise since at least the 1970s.
In more recent decades, the area has been home to the production of meth and the cultivation of marijuana, both legal and illegal.
Some of the most prominent — and most violent — figures of Mexico’s recent drug wars have ties to Tulare, including Jose Maria Guizar Valencia, a former leader of the brutal Zetas cartel, who was born there.
The slayings stunned the quiet community of Goshen.
County Supervisor Eddie Valero, who represents the town, called the deaths “everyone’s worst nightmare.”
“These senseless acts of violence, especially with infants, children and young adults, have no place in our communities,” Valero said in a statement.
Anyone with information is asked to call the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office at 559-733-6218.