A 20-year-old Los Angeles man was arrested and charged with three murders, including the murder of a mother and father who were shot to death while sitting in their car with their 1-year-old son who was injured but survived.
The Los Angeles Police Department arrested Dion Johnson on Monday in connection with three separate shootings. He was charged with the murders of Carlos Loera, 23, Ashley Guzmán, 18, and Joseph Saldaña, 17, authorities announced Thursday during a news conference with relatives of the victims. Johnson was also charged with five counts of attempted murder in connection with five people who were injured during the shootings.
The injured baby's mother and father, Guzman and Loera, were killed Sept. 4 in the 1000 block of 253rd Street in Harbor City. When police arrived, they found the couple's son with a gunshot wound in the seat of a car. The child's safety seat stopped a bullet that ended up hitting the boy, but he survived, LAPD Capt. Jamie Bennett said.
Several weeks later, Saldaña was shot and killed while visiting his family in the 1200 block of North Park Western Drive in San Pedro on September 30. He was standing outside a relative's home shortly after midnight when he was shot, along with three other people who were wounded.
Saldaña was murdered a few weeks before his 18th birthday. He was scheduled to begin attending Cerritos College, where he wanted to study engineering, according to his family. He was also ready to start his first job at Walmart.
“He was just a totally innocent kid who stayed home and played video games. He was a player,” said his father, Joseph Saldaña Sr., as he wore a badge with a photo of his son beaming at him with a bright smile.
“In every photo, he radiated that smile,” said his godmother Monique Vásquez while carrying a locket with young Saldaña's ashes.
A third shooting took place on October 2 in Wilmington, where police say a 43-year-old man was shot and seriously injured.
Homicide investigators said they were able to link all three shootings to Johnson and said there may be additional suspects. All of the shootings appear to be gang-related, Bennett said, but investigators did not offer additional information about a motive. Johnson has a criminal record in Las Vegas dating back to before he moved to Los Angeles, authorities said, but they did not say what part of the city he lived in when he was arrested.
“A 17-year-old was murdered, there was a young couple who was trying to start a family, who was murdered, and you have a young son who now has to go through his life without his parents,” the Los Angeles district deputy said. Lawyer. Bobby Grace. “And this is something no one wants to see.”
Los Angeles City Councilman Tim McOsker said the gunman “wreaked havoc” in communities affected by the shootings over the course of just a few weeks.
“Today gives us the opportunity to advocate for families and the next generation of these families and generations of these families,” he said.
Vanessa Guzmán and her family wore t-shirts with Ashley Guzmán's smiling face. She and her mother, Nora Galván, sobbed during the press conference as they sat next to a baby carrier with a colorful blanket covering Ashley Guzmán and Carlos Loera's son.
Vanessa Guzmán described her sister as a bit of a joker, who would laugh, dance and make faces to cheer up someone who was upset.
“She was like the life of the party,” Vanessa Guzmán said. “Now that she's gone, everything feels very calm.”
