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A man and woman regarded as “persons of interest” in a weekend shooting spree in the Whittier and La Mirada areas — and who had been arrested for an unrelated crime — have been arrested in connection with the shootings, sheriff’s officials confirmed Thursday.
Alejandro Lazo, 21, and Reyna Gomez, 26, were arrested Saturday night by Whittier police in connection with a shooting at a Whittier-area hotel, but authorities at the time were unsure if they were linked to the earlier shootings.
Homicide detectives have scheduled an afternoon news conference to discuss the case and to clarify the sequence of events. The crime spree began with a carjacking about 2:15 p.m. Saturday in Pico Rivera. About 4 p.m., reports began coming in about a man and a woman in the stolen vehicle shooting at people in Pico Rivera.
Around that time, Sahagun, 44, of Norwalk, was shot at Santa Gertrudes Avenue and Alicante Road in La Mirada. He was taken to UCI Medical Center in Orange, where he died at 4:51 p.m. Saturday, according to the Orange County coroner’s office.
Additional shootings were reported in various locations in the area, with at least two other people injured, authorities said. Another shooting was reported around 8 p.m. in Santa Fe Springs.
The carjacked vehicle was found abandoned at 6:30 p.m. at Amelia Mayberry Park, at Painter Avenue and Lakeland Road in unincorporated South Whittier.
Around 8:30 p.m., Whittier police responded to a report of a shooting at an area hotel and they arrested Lazo and Gomez in an allegedly stolen vehicle, authorities said. It was unclear if anyone was wounded in that shooting.
Sheriff’s officials said at the time that Lazo and Gomez matched the description of the suspects in the earlier shootings, but they did not immediately link the couple to the crime spree.