UPDATE: Victim identified, three arrested for his killing (updates throughout) . . .
Jose Miguel Quiroz and friends were heading into Taqueria de Anda, 1106 S. Bristol St., Santa Ana, shortly after 2 a.m. Sunday when they were confronted by up to six gang members.
Quiroz's group informed they do not belong to a gang, they were just going inside to get something to eat. But a fistfight broke out, a gang member produced a handgun, shots were fired . . . and 22-year-old Quiroz is now dead.
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He was hit with bullets in the upper chest and later pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics who had been summoned by police officers who heard multiple gunshots and rushed to the taqueria parking lot.
There they found Quiroz lying unconscious and not breathing. A 20-year-old friend of his was taken to a local hospital with a gunshot wound to the abdomen. He is expected to survive.
Police do not believe the victims were gang members.
Their attackers fled in various directions in the area of South Bristol and West McFadden Avenue.
The Orange County Register reports today that three have since been arrested for the murder of Quiroz: Ivan Derek Castañeda, 20; Marcos Jonathan Barona, 23; and Jesus Cruz, 35.
A police spokesman tells the Register that Castañeda and Barona were arrested shortly after the shootings, but that the latter man identified himself by his older brother's name–until it became apparent he was not going to be released.
Cruz reportedly sashayed into Santa Ana PD headquarters Monday morning to turn himself in.
Police are still looking for the other guys; call (714) 245-8648 if you have information.
At the time of the shooting, Castañeda was out on $20,000 bail and expected in court
today to face felony charges of resisting an officer, criminal street
gang vandalism and street terrorism following a March arrest, while Barona spent 16 months in state
prison after being convicted in 2006 for being a gang member carrying a loaded firearm plus a
sentencing enhancement for being in a criminal street gang, the Register reports.
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.
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