An Arizona man will serve the rest of his life in jail for the deaths of four men, three of whom were discovered in a flaming SUV in a California neighborhood in broad daylight, and a fourth who was murdered in his car miles away in a Mexican drug cartel-linked carnage.
Raul Gastellum Flores, 33, was sentenced on Wednesday in Orange County, California, for the murders of Fernando Meza, 20, Antonio Medina, 19, and brothers Edgar Berrelleza, 26, and Joel Berrelleza, 35, according to a news release.
Flores was convicted in April of four felony charges of first-degree murder, four special circumstances of murder while committing a robbery, and four special circumstances of multiple murders, according to authorities.
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During the trial, Orange County Senior Deputy District Attorney Harris Siddiq revealed the horror that day in November 2015, when one of the victims was burned alive inside the torched GMC Yukon.
According to City News Service, Siddiq described the victims as having their flesh melt in front of a high school during the middle of the day. “This was a plan carried out by people motivated by greed and a thirst for power.”
Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer stated that the murders were committed to “maximize the terror for the murdered while maximizing the pleasure for the murderers.”
“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,” Spitzer stated in a news release.
The events leading up to the murders began on November 9, 2015. Flores and several accomplices went to an Orange apartment and held Medina, Meza, and Edgar Berrelleza at gunpoint, forcing them into the Yukon and holding them hostage while Flores called Rosario Adan Roman-Lopez, the plot’s now-deceased orchestrator, who told him, “He knew what needed to be done,” according to prosecutors.
According to officials, the assailants shot Meza and Medina many times in the head and chest while Flores drove the SUV. Edgar Berrelleza was shot in the head and back many times before the attackers fled the SUV and entered a waiting car, according to prosecutors. Flores kept driving the Yukon with the three victims inside, finally coming to a stop on a quiet street in Orange, more than 30 miles south of downtown Los Angeles.
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According to The Orange County Register, Flores later revealed to detectives that he doused the victims in gasoline and burned them with a cigarette lighter.
Prosecutors say he was still driving the SUV when it caught fire. He hopped out of the moving SUV as it burnt, and Flores rushed to the waiting sedan. Cellphone footage recorded the terror when the SUV skidded onto a sidewalk. A guy who identified himself as Mike told the Register that the SUV drove up to his driveway and he attempted to extinguish the fire with a fire extinguisher.
Mike said, “Oh, my God, it’s a body,” when he peeked into the truck, according to the newspaper. “It was pretty gruesome and right at my doorstep.”
After getting into the sedan, Flores went to an apartment in Orange where Roman-Lopez and others had tied up Joel Berrelleza and stolen over $60,000 in heroin, money, and safes, according to authorities.
Flores and an accomplice then pushed Joel Berrelleza into his own Pontiac and shot him in the car as they drove, recording his final breaths on a cellphone, according to authorities.
Orange police were summoned shortly after 2 p.m. that day to the burning SUV, which witnesses had been dousing with a garden hose. Firefighters extinguished the flames, and authorities recovered the burned remains. Authorities discovered that Meza, who had been shot, stabbed, and had his wrists bound, was still alive when the fire began. The coroner discovered soot in his lungs. Officials stated he perished as a result of the gunshot wounds and fire.
Six days later, police recovered Joel Berrelleza’s death in his Pontiac in Fontana, approximately 50 miles from the Orange crime site. A bystander reported a man sleeping in a truck for several days, prompting law authorities to respond.
Authorities immediately determined who was involved and why the murders occurred. According to authorities, Roman-Lopez ordered the hits after Edgar and Joel Berrelleza cut him out of their Sinaloa Cartel-run drug dealing operation. So Roman-Lopez asked Flores to carry it out. Flores came from Phoenix to Orange County, equipped with several handguns and AK-47s, “to steal tens of thousands of dollars from the Berrelleza brothers, and to murder them if they refused to pay,” prosecutors claimed.
Authorities discovered that Roman-Lopez was slain in Mexico months later in retaliation for the Southern California killings, according to authorities. Authorities said they have warrants for the arrest of two more who are still wanted in the California cases.