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- Five men have been arrested in connection with the murder of six individuals in California's Mojave Desert.
- The victims, all men, were shot dead, and four of them were also burned.
- The sheriff suggested that the 2016 legalisation of recreational cannabis in California has inadvertently fuelled a black market and cartel activity, contributing to such crimes.
Five men have been arrested on suspicion of murdering six people last week in a remote patch of California's Mojave Desert, a mass killing investigators believe stemmed from the illicit marijuana trade, local law enforcement officials said on Monday.
The six victims, all men, were shot to death, and four of them also were burned, their bodies left strewn in a grisly crime scene discovered last Tuesday night at the junction of two dirt roads about 97 km northeast of Los Angeles, officials said.
Authorities said some of the victims may have themselves been involved in criminal activity that led to the killings.
"It looks like illicit marijuana was the driving force behind these murders," Sheriff Shannon Dicus told reporters at a news briefing in San Bernardino on Monday evening.
Dicus
said the November 2016 voter-approved ballot measure that legalised the use,
sale and cultivation of recreational cannabis for adults in California also
lowered penalties for illicit marijuana offenses from felonies to misdemeanors.
Dicus said:
Deputies who located the bodies in an area of desert scrub near the community of El Mirage off Highway 395 last Tuesday responded to a 911 emergency phone call from a man speaking Spanish who said he had been shot and did not know his own whereabouts, according to sheriff's Sergeant Michael Warrick.
That man was among the six found dead a short time later after police tracked the phone call to the scene of the killings.
Some of the victims are believed to be of Honduran origin, officials said. The five men arrested are believed to be the only suspects involved in the killings. They were taken into custody at an illegal cannabis cultivation site under development and were jailed without bond, the sheriff said.
Los Angeles television station KTLA-TV reported last week that aerial footage from the scene showed bloodied bodies on the ground with dozens of evidence markers and bullet casings surrounding them.
Two vehicles - an SUV and a van - were also left at the scene. KTLA said the SUV was riddled with bullet holes and appeared to have some of its windows blown out. One of the bodies was found in one of the vehicles.
