Five men were arrested in connection with the brutal murder of six people in California’s Mojave Desert.
Geri Lavrov / Getty Images
- Five men have been arrested in connection with the murder of
six individuals in California’s Mojave Desert. - The victims, all men, were shot dead, and four of them were
also burned. - The sheriff suggested that the 2016 legalisation of
recreational cannabis in California has inadvertently fuelled a black market
and cartel activity, contributing to such crimes.
Five
men have been arrested on suspicion of murdering six people last week in a
remote patch of California’s Mojave Desert, a mass killing investigators
believe stemmed from the illicit marijuana trade, local law enforcement
officials said on Monday.
The
six victims, all men, were shot to death, and four of them also were burned,
their bodies left strewn in a grisly crime scene discovered last Tuesday night
at the junction of two dirt roads about 97 km northeast of Los Angeles,
officials said.
Authorities
said some of the victims may have themselves been involved in criminal activity
that led to the killings.
“It
looks like illicit marijuana was the driving force behind these murders,”
Sheriff Shannon Dicus told reporters at a news briefing in San Bernardino on
Monday evening.
Dicus
said the November 2016 voter-approved ballot measure that legalised the use,
sale and cultivation of recreational cannabis for adults in California also
lowered penalties for illicit marijuana offenses from felonies to misdemeanors.
Dicus said:
By allowing that, we’ve unleashed a plague in California, and the plague is the black market of marijuana, and certainly cartel activity, and a number of victims that are out there.
Deputies
who located the bodies in an area of desert scrub near the community of El
Mirage off Highway 395 last Tuesday responded to a 911 emergency phone call
from a man speaking Spanish who said he had been shot and did not know his own
whereabouts, according to sheriff’s Sergeant Michael Warrick.
That
man was among the six found dead a short time later after police tracked the
phone call to the scene of the killings.
Some
of the victims are believed to be of Honduran origin, officials said. The five
men arrested are believed to be the only suspects involved in the killings.
They were taken into custody at an illegal cannabis cultivation site under
development and were jailed without bond, the sheriff said.
Los
Angeles television station KTLA-TV reported last week that aerial footage from
the scene showed bloodied bodies on the ground with dozens of evidence markers
and bullet casings surrounding them.
Two
vehicles – an SUV and a van – were also left at the scene. KTLA said the SUV
was riddled with bullet holes and appeared to have some of its windows blown
out. One of the bodies was found in one of the vehicles.
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