Victim called police after fatal Mojave desert shootings over marijuana dispute
Five suspects have been charged with murder in the fatal shootings of six men in a southern California desert in what investigators said was a dispute over marijuana.
The charges come a week after authorities came upon the remote crime scene at a dirt crossroads in the Mojave desert off Highway 395. Investigators revealed this week they responded to the rural area after receiving a call from one of the victims, seeking help after he had been shot.
Prosecutors have charged each of the suspects with six felony counts of murder with a special circumstance allegation of multiple murders, the San Bernardino county district attorney’s office said in a statement. They also each face six felony counts of robbery.
The DA’s office identified the suspects as Jose Nicolas Hernandez-Sarabia, 33; Toniel Beaz-Duarte, 35; Mateo Beaz-Duarte, 24; Jose Gregorgio Hernandez-Sarabia, 36; and Jose Manuel Burgos Parra, 26.
Toniel Beaz-Duarte and Mateo Beaz-Duarte appeared in court on Tuesday and pleaded not guilty to all charges, the DA’s office said. They were appointed public defenders and ordered to return to court on 6 February.
The others were to be arraigned on Wednesday. The county public defender’s office did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on the case.
Authorities discovered the bodies on 23 January in the Mojave desert outside El Mirage after Franklin Bonilla, 22, called 911 and said in Spanish that he had been shot and he didn’t know where he was.
The area where the shooting took place was so remote the San Bernardino sheriff’s department called in help from the California highway patrol’s aviation division to find the scene where they found the six victims.
All the victims were probably shot to death, and four of the bodies had been partially burned together, Michael Warrick of the San Bernardino county sheriff ’s office said in a news conference earlier this week. A fifth victim was found inside a Chevy Trailblazer, and the sixth, Bonilla, was discovered nearby shortly after.
The sheriff’s office said it had determined the victims in the shooting had arranged to meet in the area for a marijuana transaction.
“This mass murder, done in a dark secluded desert, clearly illuminates the violence and crime that exists as a direct consequence of illegal marijuana operations,” the district attorney Jason Anderson said in Tuesday’s statement.
The San Bernardino county sheriff, Shannon Dicus, said on Monday that the bodies were found in an area known for black market cannabis about 50 miles (80km) north-east of Los Angeles. In 2023 the department served 411 search warrants for illegal marijuana grow sites countywide and recovered 655,000 plants and $370m, Dicus said.
The suspects were arrested and eight firearms were seized after deputies served search warrants on Sunday in the Adelanto and Apple Valley areas of San Bernardino county and the Pinyon Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles county, sheriff’s officials said.
Officials said investigators believe all the suspects in the case are in custody.
Authorities identified four of the victims as Baldemar Mondragon-Albarran, 34, of Adelanto; Franklin Noel Bonilla, 22, of Hesperia; Kevin Dariel Bonilla, 25, of Hesperia; and a 45-year-old man whose name was withheld pending family notification. Coroner’s officials were trying to identify the remaining two men.
California voters legalized recreational marijuana in 2016, and the state has become the world’s largest legal cannabis marketplace since then, with billions in annual sales. But the illegal market continues to thrive.
Dicus called the black market “a plague” that results in violence, and he called on lawmakers to reform cannabis laws to “keep legalization but revert to harsher penalties for users of illegal pot”.
In 2020, seven people were fatally shot at an illegal marijuana-growing operation in a rural town in neighboring Riverside county. More than 20 people lived on the property, which had several makeshift dwellings used for the production of honey oil, a potent cannabis concentrate.