5 arrested in shooting deaths of 6 in California desert

Jan. 30 (UPI) -- Authorities in California's San Bernardino County have arrested five suspects accused of fatally shooting six people last week in a dispute over narcotics.

The arrests were announced during a press conference Monday night, nearly a week after the bodies of the six victims were found Jan. 23 on a dirt road in the unincorporated area of Adelanto, Calif., which is located about 85 miles northeast of Los Angeles.

Sgt. Michael Warrick of the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Office told reporters that authorities were notified of the crime by one of the victims who is believed to be 22-year-old Franklin Noel Bonilla.

Warrick said Bonilla had called dispatch at about 8:16 p.m. PT on Jan. 23, stating in Spanish that he had been shot multiple times but did not know where he was.

Dispatchers were able to track his phone to the area of Lessing Avenue and Shadow Mountain Road where responding officers located multiple gunshot victims and two vehicles, one which had been shot several times.

Warrick said four of the victims had suffered severe burns with a fifth located in one of the vehicles, a Chevy Trailblazer. The sixth victim was later found a short distance away from the original crime scene, he said.

Three of the victims have been identified as Baldemar Mondragon-Albarran, 34, Kevin Dariel Bonilla, 25, and Franklin Noel Bonilla. The identities of two other victims were still being determined while the identity of a sixth victim was known but being withheld from the public until next of kin has been notified.

The motive for the killings appears to be narcotics, Warrick said.

"We are confident that this appears to be a dispute over marijuana, which resulted in the murders," he said.

Amid their investigation, authorities learned that the victims had arranged to meet at that location for an unspecified marijuana transaction, the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Office said in a statement.

On Sunday, all six suspects were arrested. Authorities executed multiple search warrants in Apple Valley and Adelanto, confiscating eight firearms that are undergoing testing to see if they match those used in the crime, as well as other evidence, Warrick said.

"We are still conducting follow up investigations but we are confident we have arrested all the suspects in this case," he said. "They are currently in custody with no bail."

The suspects have been identified as Toniel Baez-Duarte, 34, Mateo Baez-Duarte, 24, Jose Nicolas Hernandez-Sarabia, 33, Jose Gregorio Hernandez-Sarabia, 34, and Jose Manuel Burgos Parra, 26.

The have been book on charges of murder, the sheriff's office said.

Police would not explicitly state what was the nature of the marijuana dispute, but Shannon Dicus, sheriff-coroner for San Bernardino County, said it is fair to call the murders connected to organized crime in an area known for illicit marijuana.

He said in the past 12 months in that area, there were 411 search warrants executed for illegal marijuana grow operations, 14 honey oil labs were discovered, 655,000 marijuana plants were confiscated as was 74,000 pounds of processed marijuana and $370 million.

Eleven search warrants were executed in that time period for the area immediately around where the bodies were found, he said.

"It looks like illicit marijuana was the driving force behind this murder," he said.