Goshen shooting suspect had ‘extensive history’ with slain family

One of the men accused of shooting dead six members of a Central California family was involved in an “extensive history and feud” with the family and had once shot one of them, according to police files obtained by The Times.

Just before 10 p.m. on August 6, 2014, Tulare County Sheriff’s Deputies responded to a shooting at the Wooden Shoe RV Park in Goshen. They found Eladio Parraz with his arm around his girlfriend Crystal Hammonds crying hysterically, an MP wrote in a report.

Eladio Parraz told lawmakers someone shot Hammonds before he fled in a white sedan with tinted windows. Based on her description of the driver, Eladio Parraz said he believes the woman is linked to someone he knows as “Nano,” according to another MP’s report.

Eladio Parraz told the MP, “His family and ‘Nano’s’ family had a long history and feud.” Police identified “Nano” as Angel Uriarte and determined that he had shot Hammonds that night in 2014. Uriate was eventually sentenced to prison for the shooting.

Eight and a half years later, Eladio Parraz, 52, was the first person to be executed, authorities say, when Uriarte and another man, Noah Beard, entered the Parraz family home on the night of January 16.

After gunning down Eladio Parraz, prosecutors claim, Uriarte and Beard killed Marcos Parraz, 19; Jennifer Analla, 50; and finally Rosa Parraz, 72, who was shot in the head as she knelt by her bed. Alissa Parraz, 16, fled the home with her 10-month-old son Nycholas and lifted the baby over a fence before climbing over it herself. Beard gave chase and shot both of them in the head, prosecutors charged.

Uriarte fired at federal agents trying to arrest him last week, authorities said. He underwent surgery after the shooting and is expected to survive. Beard was arrested without incident. Authorities now say that Uriarte is known by the nickname “Nanu”.

Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux said last week that his investigators had not identified a motive for the killings, other than the fact that members of the Parraz family were sureños — members of street gangs subordinate to the prison-based Mexican mafia – while most gangs lived in the Visalia area identify themselves as Norteño, meaning they report to the Nuestra Familia, a prison gang that competes with the Mexican Mafia.

But records filed in Uriarte’s 2014 case suggest he harbored a long-standing hatred for the Parraz family.

At the time of the earlier shooting, Eladio Perez did not describe in detail the animosity between his family and Uriartes, saying he “no longer interfered in the feud,” wrote one MP, Kyle Kalender, but he did say “his nephew Martin Parraz and ‘ Nano’ didn’t get along.”

Eladio Parraz said Hammonds was getting out of his nephew’s car, a white Dodge Neon, when the shots rang out. “Eladio felt that whoever shot Crystal was looking for Martin,” Calendar wrote.

Martin Parraz was not killed in last month’s shooting.

Crying and breathing heavily, Hammond’s calendar told her she was returning from the trailer park office where she was showering when a white car drove by. The driver, a Latina in her 20s, made eye contact with her, she said. The car drove about 30 feet down a dirt road and then stopped. The rear passenger door opened.

Hammonds recalled “a tall, skinny man” standing by the car and hearing gunshots. She ducked behind Martin Parraz’s car and felt rocks and dirt hit her legs and “something hit her in the face,” Calendar wrote.

Inspecting the Dodge Neon, Kalender noticed two bullet holes in the rear fender and a bullet fragment under the muffler. Another MP wrote in a report that he found a blue headscarf on the driver’s seat, which he took to be a “gang license” and a 20-gram wad of methamphetamine in the glove compartment.

MPs found bullet holes in a nearby trailer, whose horrified owner said her two young children “fell asleep just yards from where the bullets hit the trailer,” Deputy Kenneth Jones wrote.

That night law enforcement officers stopped a white 2010 Dodge Avenger, which matched the description of the suspects’ car, at an arco in Goshen. Questioned at the gas station, Uriarte, then 26, said he was a “dropout from the north” but still a member of the gang “Goshen Familia,” Calender wrote.

Uriarte had “GF” tattooed under his left eye, as well as “G-Town” and “559” — an area code for Central California — on his left arm, Kalender wrote. According to the deputy’s report, he wore a red shirt, red belt and shoes with red laces.

Another man who was pulled over in the Dodge Avenger, Victor Lopez, was wearing a red hat and red Jordan sneakers. The 17-year-old said he “hangs out with Northerners” but denied being in a gang, Calendar wrote.

Norteño gangs prefer the color red, while Sureños generally identify with the color blue.

Law enforcement officials say a growing number of gangs in central and northern California — long thought to be the domain of the Nuestra Familia and Norteño gangs under the organization’s control — now identify as Sureños, meaning they take orders and pay “taxes” to them Mexican mafia.

At the gas station, the woman who was driving the car started crying, wrote one of the deputies responding to the shooting. Jasmine Reyes claimed she “had no idea this was going to happen” and said she was afraid Uriarte would hear her speaking to the police, but agreed to be questioned at the sheriff’s station, Jones wrote .

In an interview room, Reyes said she was having beers with Uriarte, Lopez and a woman, Catrina Jimenez, when they decided to drive around Goshen. Because Jimenez was drunk, Reyes drove her Dodge Avenger.

Reyes said Uriarte told her to drive to the Wooden Shoe trailer park. As she drove slowly through the rows of trailers, Uriarte opened the door and got out. The next thing she heard was three shots, she said. Uriarte got back in the car and told her to go.

On Highway 99, she yelled at Uriarte, “What the hell are you doing?” Uriate, she said, told her, “Don’t trip.” He said he had “funk” with the Parraz family, which Reyes told her I understand Uriarte, and the family has “problems,” the report says.

Jimenez, the owner of the Dodge Avenger, was questioned at the sheriff’s station, berating the deputies and calling the incident “cops,” Jones wrote in his report. “Catrina went on to say the only reason we’re making a big deal out of this is because it has to do with the Parraz family.”

Jimenez said the Parraz family “gets away with it all and the sheriff’s office is taking no action to prosecute them,” Jones wrote. She claimed they “got what they deserved” because a member of the Parraz family ran over her father with a car, permanently disabling him, the report said.

Uriarte refused to be questioned by the police.

At the Arco, MPs performed what they called a “show-up,” taking the four suspects to Hammonds and asking if she recognized them. Hammonds sat in a squad car and began shaking and crying when he was shown Uriarte, one MP wrote. “He’s the one who shot me,” she said, adding that she’s 100% sure.

Uriarte pleaded no objection to assaulting the woman with a firearm and admitted gang reinforcement, court documents show. He served five years of a seven-year sentence.

Interviewed by an assistant parole officer at the prison, Uriarte said he had lived in Tulare County his entire life. At the time of his arrest in 2014, he was unemployed and living with his fiancé, her mother and their five children in a small house off 99 in Goshen.