shooting in Goshen, California
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.
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Authorities continue search for suspects in California ‘massacre’ of 6
By Stefanie Dazio
Associated Press
•
Jan 17, 2023 at 6:59 pm
Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux speaks during a news conference Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2023, in Visalia, Calif., about the victims from a shooting the before that left six people dead in Goshen. (Ron Holman/AP)
LOS ANGELES — 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 the 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.”
The other four victims ranged from 19 to 72 years old, including a grandmother who was shot as she slept. Their autopsies are expected to be completed later in the week.
“None of this was by accident,” Boudreaux said during a news conference Tuesday. “It was deliberate, intentional and horrific.”
Boudreaux also walked back his earlier comments to reporters that the violence was likely a cartel hit, saying that investigators are still looking into that.
“I am not eliminating that possibility,” the sheriff said. “These people were clearly shot in the head and they were also shot in places where the shooter would know that a quick death would occur ... This is also similar to high-ranking gang affiliation and the style of executions that they commit.”
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.