Tulare County shooting suspect had ‘extensive history’ with slain family
LOS ANGELES — One of the men accused of gunning down six members of a Central California family had been embroiled in an “extensive history and feud” with the family and once shot at one of them, according to police records obtained by the Los Angeles Times.
Shortly before 10 p.m. on Aug. 6, 2014, Tulare County sheriff’s deputies responded to a shooting at the Wooden Shoe RV Park in Goshen. They found Eladio Parraz with his arm around his girlfriend, Crystal Hammonds, who was crying hysterically, a deputy wrote in a report.
Eladio Parraz told the deputies someone had fired shots at Hammonds before fleeing in a white sedan with tinted windows. Based on her description of the female driver, Eladio Parraz said he believed the woman was associated with someone he knew as “Nano,” according to another deputy’s report.
Eladio Parraz told the deputy “his family and ‘Nano’s’ family had an extensive history and feud.” Police identified “Nano” as Angel Uriarte and determined he had shot at Hammonds that night in 2014. Uriate eventually was sentenced to prison for the shooting.
Eight and a half years later, Eladio Parraz, 52, was the first person to be executed, authorities say, when Uriarte and another man, Noah Beard, entered the Parraz family’s home the night of Jan. 16.
After gunning down Eladio Parraz, prosecutors allege, Uriarte and Beard killed Marcos Parraz, 19; Jennifer Analla, 50; and finally Rosa Parraz, 72, who was shot in the head while kneeling beside her bed. Alissa Parraz, 16, fled the home with her 10-monthold son, Nycholas, lifting the baby over a fence before scrambling over it herself. Beard pursued them, killing both with shots to the head, prosecutors charged.
Uriarte fired at federal agents who were trying to arrest him last week, authorities said. He underwent surgery after the shootout and is expected to survive. Beard was arrested without incident. Authorities now say Uriarte is known by the nickname “Nanu.”
Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux said last week that his investigators had identified no motive for the killings, beyond the fact that members of the Parraz family were Sureños — street gang members subservient to the prison-based Mexican Mafia — while most gangs in the Visalia area identify as Norteño, meaning they answer to the Nuestra Familia, a prison gang that rivals the Mexican Mafia.
But records filed in Uriarte’s 2014 case suggest he harbored a long-standing hatred of the Parraz family.
At the time of the earlier shooting, Eladio Perez did not describe the ill will between his family and Uriarte’s in detail and said he “did not involve himself with the feud any longer,” wrote a deputy, Kyle Kalender, but he said “his nephew, Martin Parraz, and ‘Nano’ did not get along.”
Eladio Parraz said Hammonds had been exiting his nephew’s car, a white Dodge Neon, when the shots rang out. “Eladio felt that whoever shot at Crystal was looking for Martin,” Kalender wrote.
Martin Parraz was not killed in last month’s shooting.
Crying and breathing heavily, Hammonds told Kalender she’d returned from the trailer park’s office, where she’d taken a shower, when a white car drove by. The driver, a Latina in her 20s, made eye contact with her, she said. The car continued about 30 feet down a dirt road, then stopped. The rear passenger’s side door opened.
Hammonds recalled seeing “a tall skinny male” standing next to the car and hearing gunshots. She ducked behind Martin Parraz’s car and felt rocks and dirt strike her legs and “something hit her in the face,” Kalender wrote.
Inspecting the Dodge Neon, Kalender noted two bullet holes in the rear fender and a bullet fragment beneath the muffler. Another deputy wrote in a report that he found a blue bandanna, which he considered “gang indicia,” on the driver’s seat, and a bindle containing 20 grams of methamphetamine in the glove box.