Narco in Southern California gets life for 4 gruesome cartel-related executions
A 33-year-old man from Phoenix, Arizona responsible for one of the more gruesome cartel-related murder scenes to ever unfold in Southern California was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole Wednesday, prosecutors announced.
On Nov. 9, 2015, officers with the Orange Police Department responded to reports of a burning SUV in a residential neighborhood on Oakmont Street just after 2 p.m., where bystanders were attempting to douse the flames with a garden hose.
All three men in the SUV had been shot multiple times in the head and the chest. One of the victims found with his hands tied had also been stabbed. Authorities say he was found to have soot in his lungs, meaning he was still alive when fire consumed the vehicle.
Surveillance cameras captured 33-year-old Raul Gastellum Flores jumping out of the driver’s seat of the SUV moments before it burst into flames with the bodies inside.
The 33-year-old then escaped to a waiting sedan occupied by two other men.
Later, at an apartment in Orange, Flores met up with a co-conspirator who, along with unidentified gunmen, had kidnapped an associate of the three victims in the SUV.
The crew proceeded to steal safes, cash and more than $60,000 worth of heroin from the apartment, authorities said.
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“Flores and another accomplice forced [the man] into his Pontiac where he was shot three times as they drove and recorded his dying breaths on a cellphone,” prosecutors said.
That victim’s body was discovered in Fontana six days later after a passerby called police to report a man sleeping in his vehicle for several days.
The four victims were identified as Edgar and Joel Berrelleza, brothers with ties to the notorious Sinaloa Cartel, and two associates named Fernando Meza and Antonio Medina.
The murders, according to prosecutors, were retaliation for the Berrellezas’ decision to cut another man, identified as Rosario Roman-Lopez, out of their drug dealing enterprise with the Sinaloa Cartel.
Roman-Lopez, who orchestrated the murders, recruited Flores to travel from Arizona to Orange County armed with handguns, AK-47s and plans to steal tens of thousands of dollars from Berrellezas or kill them if they refused to pay, prosecutors said.
Two other defendants charged in the case remain wanted. Roman-Lopez is believed to have been killed in Mexico in retribution for the murders. A fourth defendant was a cooperating witness in the case.
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Flores was convicted by a jury in April of this year on four felony counts of first-degree murder, four special circumstances of murder during the commission of a robbery and four special circumstances of multiple murders, a news release from the Orange County District Attorney’s Office stated.
“These murders were not intended just to kill; they were carried out in a way to maximize the terror for the murdered while maximizing the pleasure for the murderers,” said Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer. “Someone who takes such delight in taking the lives of others as a hired gun is someone who should not spend a single minute more outside the walls of a California state prison.”
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