Two men have just been arrested for a wild car-to-car shooting in Santa Ana that left a 36-year-old man dead.
Two years ago.
Steve Moreno, 25, of Santa Ana, and Emmanuel Vega, 29, of Eastvale, have been booked on suspicion of killing Juan Manuel Diaz on Nov. 2, 2011, police announced Wednesday.
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Wild Edinger Avenue Scene Ends With 1 Dead, 6 Hurt
Diaz was driving a passenger in a Chevy van in the 1600 or 1700 block of Edinger Avenue in Santa Ana that evening in November 2011 when they were fired upon by someone in a Toyota 4Runner, according to Santa Ana Police Cpl. Anthony Bertagna, the department spokesman.
Both the van occupants were stuck by gunfire before the vehicle wound up heading westbound on the wrong side of the street before colliding at the Grand Avenue intersection with a VW Beetle stuffed with adults and children. The van eventually stopped in the Alberto's Mexican Restaurant parking lot, where Diaz was pronounced dead.
His passenger and an aunt, uncle and their three nieces and nephews–ages 5, 9 and 13–in the Bug were hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries.
Police retrieved video surveillance footage of the 4Runner cutting through a Shell gas station at Grand and Edinger, which produced some leads in the days following the shooting, Bertagna told City News Service, although he confided the case went cold.
Detectives recently generated new leads that led to Moreno, who was arrested during a traffic stop in Santa Ana on Tuesday, and Vega, who was popped at his Chino workplace, according to Bertagna.
While police do not yet have a motive, Bertagna said detectives believe Vega was the shooter and that the 4Runner has been recovered.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.