VISALIA, Calif. (AP) – Six people – including a 17-year-old mother and her 6-month-old baby – were killed in a shooting early Monday at a home in central California, and authorities are searching for at least two suspects, they said. said sheriff’s officials.
Deputies responded around 3:30 a.m. to reports of multiple shots fired at an unincorporated residence in Goshen, east of Visalia, the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office said.
“Actually the report was that an active shooter was in the area because of the number of shots being fired,” Sheriff Mike Boudreaux told reporters.
Deputies found two victims dead in the street and a third fatally shot in the doorway of the home, Boudreaux said.
Three other victims were found inside the house, including a man who was still alive but later died in hospital, he said.
The sheriff said investigators are looking for at least two suspects. They believe there is a gang connection to the murder. The sheriff’s office executed a drug-related search warrant at the home last week, Boudreaux said.
“We also believe that this was not a random act of violence. We believe that this family was a targeted family,” he said.
Two of the victims, the young mother and her child, were shot in the head, the sheriff said.
Samuel Pina said Monday that his teenage daughter, Alissa Parraz, and her baby, Nycholas Nolan Parraz, were among those killed.
“I can’t wrap my head around what kind of animal would do this,” he told the Associated Press.
Pina said that Parraz and her child lived with her father’s side of the Goshen family, and that her paternal uncle, paternal cousin, and grandmother and great-grandmother were also killed.
“It comes in big waves,” he said.
Goshen is a rural community of about 3,000 residents 35 miles (56 kilometers) southeast of Fresno in the agricultural San Joaquin Valley.