LONG BEACH, Calif. (AP) — Police in Long Beach have arrested two alleged gang members in the 2008 murders of five transients who were gunned down in a homeless encampment near a Southern California freeway.
Police Chief Jim McDonnell said Wednesday that 31-year-old David Ponce and 25-year-old Max Rafael are each charged with five special circumstance murders.
Five people were shot to death in November 2008 in an area of warehouses and apartment buildings where neighbors said people often dropped by to do drugs. Police, at the time, said they received very few phone calls and had no eyewitnesses to the crime.
The announcement comes a day after an Iraq war veteran was charged in nearby Orange County with stabbing to death four homeless men in a weeks-long rampage.
