A murder charge was filed Wednesday against a 30-year-old Arizona resident accused in the shooting death of a woman at an Indio motel.
Carla Sharese Flores is suspected of fatally shooting 27-year-old Ashley Brito of Thousand Palms at the City Center Motel on March 31.
Along with murder, Flores faces a sentence-enhancing allegation of discharging a firearm causing great bodily injury.
Flores, who is being held without bail at the Smith Correctional Facility in Banning, is scheduled to make her initial court appearance Thursday afternoon.
Patrol officers responded to the motel, located at 83597 Indio Blvd., at about 7:45 p.m. on March 31 to investigate reports of a woman who had been found dead, according to the Indio Police Department.
Police identified Flores as the suspected shooter and obtained a warrant for her arrest, police said. It was not immediately clear how they pinpointed her as a suspect.
On Monday, officers responded to a disturbance call at a motel in El Centro and arrested Flores on unrelated charges, police said.
Flores allegedly gave officers a false identity at the time of the arrest, but El Centro Police Department investigators confirmed her identity and learned of the arrest warrant in Indio.
Indio police detectives retrieved Flores from the Herbert Hughes Correctional Center in El Centro and returned her to Indio for questioning, and later booked her on suspicion of murder, police said.
A motive in the shooting has not been made public.
Flores’ criminal history, if any, was not immediately available.