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Four people were shot dead in a Rowland Heights home on New Year's Eve—one of them was a man who had allegedly shot three people, before being killed by his son.
City News Service reports that sheriff's deputies arrived at the Rowland Heights home Thursday night on a report of a gunshot victim. Lt. John Saleeby of the sheriff's Walnut Station said when they arrived, "There was moaning heard in the background."
According to the L.A. Times, 33-year-old Christopher Morey made the 911 call, reporting the shooting in his home: Morey's father allegedly opened fire around 8:30 p.m., and killed Morey's mother, girlfriend, and friend. Then Morey wrestled the gun from his 54-year-old father and shot him.
Morey was arrested on suspicion of murder, and his bail is set at $1 million.
"We'll see what the D.A. wants to do," John Corina of the Sheriff's Department said. "We're going to book him for what he did—he killed another human being."
While no motive for the shooting has been discovered yet, NBC L.A. reports that investigators are looking into the possibility that an argument over the laundry machine led to the shooting. The Times reports that all those in the group were drinking, and neighbors said they drank a lot and were often loud. Police had made 25 visits to the house for disturbances in the last three years.
Ronald Calzadilla, the father of one of the victims, 27-year-old Ernesto Calzadilla, told ABC-7 that he and his son had gone over to the house together earlier in the evening. "That's his backpack. This is the beer that we bought to celebrate New Year's Day," he said. "We were supposed to go celebrate."
Calzadilla also told ABC-7 that Morey's father had "over a hundred guns in the house...Once he'd take like two, three beers, the first thing I noticed every time I came here, he had a gun collection and started loading all the guns," Calzadilla said. "He'd start walking around with an AK-47 he used to shoot in the house."
The coroner's department has yet to release the names of the other victims.
