Sixfold murder in the US: Baby and mother killed with head shots Lie reporter Claas Relotius has a new job

A 17-year-old mother and her baby were shot in the head in a gruesome six-way murder in California. The crime took place in a small town called Goshen in Tulare County and was believed to have been committed by drug criminals, Sheriff Mike Boudreaux told reporters Monday. According to the Los Angeles Times, district manager Eddie Valero spoke of a “bad nightmare” that had come true.

With the help of two fled eyewitnesses and surveillance cameras, it was possible to reconstruct how two men sneaked into the grounds of a residential building at around 3:30 a.m. (local time) on Monday night. Then, one by one, the deadly shots were fired. When the first police officers reached the crime scene shortly afterwards, they were presented with a horrifying image.

The door of the house had been kicked in and a dead man lay in the hallway. The young mother apparently tried to run away with her six-month-old baby, Boudreaux said. Her lifeless body was later found in a ditch, the dead child cradled in her arms. According to investigators, both were shot in the head — as was an elderly woman in the home who was apparently killed while sleeping in her bed.

The rest of the dead are men whose bodies lay in the street in front of the building. One of them could only be identified by DNA testing due to the severity of his facial injuries. Several victims belonged to the same family, according to the police.

Two suspects on the run

At least two fugitive suspects, believed to have links to gang and drug crime, are being sought. “I think it’s directly related to the cartel,” Sheriff Boudreaux told the Los Angeles Times. “This level of violence – it wasn’t a classic petty criminal.” On the contrary, such a “terrible carnage” rather points to nefarious professional killers. Investigators are investigating a possible connection to a house search a week ago that led to the arrest of one person and the seizure of firearms, marijuana and methamphetamine.

According to the newspaper report, the village of Goshen has about 5,000 inhabitants, most of them with Latin American roots. Although – or perhaps precisely because – only half a million people lived in the agricultural district of Tulare County, it played an important role in drug trafficking from Mexico to the United States. The area has been a smuggler’s haven since at least the 1970s. (sda/dpa)