A feud over unpaid debts and control over a lucrative drug-trafficking business led to an outburst of violence in an Orange neighborhood in 2015, where residents discovered three charred bodies inside a burning SUV rolling down their street, with a fourth body tied to the murders found days later in Fontana, prosecutors told a jury for the first time in the case Tuesday, April 9.
A crew of six men — five from the Phoenix area and another from Mexico, who prosecutors said was tied to the Sinaloa Cartel — all have been accused of participating in the sprawling murder plot that ultimately left brothers Edgar Berrelleza-Soto, 26, and Joel Mauricio Berrelleza, 35, both of Orange, and two other men dead.
Raul Gastellum Flores, 33, of Phoenix, is the only suspect so far to face a jury. He appeared inside a Santa Ana courtroom on Tuesday, the first day of his trial on four counts of murder for what Orange County prosecutors said was his part in the plot.
Wearing a blue suit and black glasses, his long hair pulled back in a bun, Flores sat quietly next to his attorney, listening as Deputy District Attorney Harris Siddiq sketched out what he believed to be Flores’ involvement in the killings.
Siddiq accused Flores of agreeing to help Rosario Roman-Lopez, a former partner of the Berrelleza brothers in a cross-border drug smuggling operation, in a plot to kidnap and kill the brothers over what Roman-Lopez said was their failure to pay him back for hiring a coyote.
Siddiq said Roman-Lopez promised to pay Flores just $2,000 to take part in the plan.
“He knew this was dangerous,” Siddiq said of Flores. “But he signed right up.”
Flores is on trial after his 2018 arrest in Oklahoma by U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents investigating a separate drug trafficking operation. While he was in custody, a detective with the Orange Police Department traveled to Oklahoma to interview him.
Siddiq said that in a series of interviews, Flores admitted to being…
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