After a predawn gun battle and a series of raids across California, authorities said Friday they had arrested two men accused of killing six people, including a teen mother and her baby, in an execution-style massacre that stunned the Central Valley farm town of Goshen last month.
The suspects were identified as Noah David Beard, 25, of Visalia and Angel “Nanu” Uriarte, 35, of Goshen, both Norteño gang members, according to the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office.
Uriarte engaged in a gun battle with federal agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives early Friday and was wounded before being taken into custody, officials said. Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux said Uriarte, who could face federal charges in the assault of a federal officer, underwent surgery at a hospital and was expected to survive.
Investigators identified Beard as the suspect accused of killing the 16-year-old and her baby.
During the news conference, Boudreaux played a grainy surveillance video showing the young mother fleeing with her son moments before they were killed.
In the video, Alissa Parraz runs across a dark driveway with her baby in her arms toward a locked chain-link gate blocking the street. Unable to escape, she hoists her baby over a nearby wooden fence and lowers him onto something on the other side before running across the driveway and vaulting over the chain-link fence.
Moments later, a man walks toward them. He raises his right arm, a dark shadow of a gun visible in his hand, then the video cuts off. Both mother and child were shot in the back of the head, Boudreaux said.
In audio from a 911 call played during the news conference, a woman inside the house is heard crying and pleading.
“They shot my boyfriend. They keep shooting outside,” she says. “I don’t know if they are still here. I’m scared. … Please hurry, please. I don’t know where they are now — [gasp] — they’re still shooting.”
“They’re still shooting?” asks the dispatcher.
“Yes,” the woman answers. “Hurry please. They’re coming back. They’re coming back. They’re back.”
“Who’s coming back?”
“The guys,” the woman says. “Do you hear them? Someone else is screaming now.”
Shots are heard on the recording.
“That’s them,” the woman says, gasping. “They’re shooting in the house.”
The woman on the 911 call survived the attack by hiding in a trailer, Boudreaux said.
Eladio Parraz Jr., 52, was killed first, followed by Marcos Parraz, 19, and Jennifer Analla, 50, who was shot in her sleep, the sheriff said. Rosa Parraz, 72, was shot in the head while on her knees just beside her bed. Alissa Parraz and 10-month-old Nycholas were the last to die.
“This family was targeted by cold-blooded killers,” Boudreaux said.
The Tulare County district attorney’s office has charged Beard and Uriarte with six counts of murder and a series of special allegations including multiple murders, and committing murders to further the activities of a criminal street gang.
The Jan. 16 killings instilled fear in Goshen, an impoverished community in the San Joaquin Valley. In recent years, drug trafficking and gang violence have turned sparsely populated rural areas such as Goshen into some of the most violent places in California, but even so, the brutality of a family’s massacre shocked the nation, prompting people from as far away as Maine to donate to a reward for the capture of the killers.
At least two members of the Parraz family were Sureño gang members, Boudreaux said, adding that Goshen is considered rival Norteño territory. Beyond that information, the sheriff said investigators had not identified any motive for the slayings.
Evidence that led to the suspects’ arrests came in part thanks to DNA analysis, which was expedited by ATF labs in Maryland, Boudreaux said. The suspects had been under constant surveillance since Jan. 23, he said.
“We knew every move they were making,” Boudreaux said. “We had them under our wing where we wanted them.” The public, he maintained, was never at risk.
