ORANGE COUNTY, Calif. (TCD) — A 33-year-old man faces up to life in prison for fatally shooting four men, lighting three of their bodies on fire, and recording the fourth man’s killing in an attempt to take over a local drug business.
The Orange County District Attorney’s Office announced April 29 that a jury found Phoenix resident Raul Gastellum Flores guilty of four counts of first-degree murder, four special circumstances of murder during the commission of a robbery, and four special circumstances of multiple murders.
Flores’ accomplice, Rosario Roman-Lopez, reportedly asked him to kill brothers Edgar Berrelleza and Joel Berrelleza because they supposedly “cut him out of their drug dealing business run by the Sinaloa Cartel.”
Flores then traveled from Phoenix to Orange County with several AK-47s and other guns to take tens of thousands of dollars from the brothers and kill them if they refused to pay Roman-Lopez.
On Nov. 9, 2015, at around 2 p.m., Orange Police Department officers were called to Oakmont Street about an SUV on fire. Nearby residents reportedly attempted to put the blaze out with garden hoses. Firefighters arrived on scene and extinguished the flames, then discovered three victims inside the vehicle.