John Jefferson
Insets, from left: Anthony Valdez, John Magat, Saiki Tavale, Mark Garcia, and Analu Tavale (Salinas Police Department). Background: A murder scene from January 2017 connected to the “Murder Squad” in Salinas, California. (KION/YouTube).
Five members of a so-called “Murder Squad” who “killed for sport,” going on “hunts” for people they suspected of being rival gang members while killing innocent bystanders in the process, were sentenced to a combined 161 years behind bars this week.
The five defendants — with nicknames such as “Gunner” and “Hitter” and whose ages range from 27 to 37 — learned their fates this week in the disturbing and senseless bloodshed that culminated in 11 deaths and 17 others injured by gunshots in senseless violence that plagued a small California city.
They were: Siaki “Shocky” “Gunner” Tavale, 27, sentenced to 41 years in prison; John “Romeo” Magat, 37, sentenced to 37 years; Anthony “Hitter” “Tony Boronda” Valdez, 27, sentenced to 31 years; Anelu “Angel” Tavale, 28, sentenced to 27 years; and Mark Anthony “Tony from Santa Rita” Garcia, 33, sentenced to 25 years. They pleaded guilty in May in the murder and racketeering conspiracy, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced in a news release.
“The ‘Murder Squad’ killed for sport, terrorizing the city of Salinas and forever altering the lives of so many innocent members of our community,” said U.S. Attorney Ismail J. Ramsey. “As described in the court filings, their conduct is reprehensible. Thanks to the strong collaboration between federal and state law enforcement over the course of many years, these men will rightfully spend the next few decades of their lives in prison.”
The gang is affiliated with what’s known as “Norteños” — or Northern California street gang. They sought out rival “Sureños” — or Southern California street gang members or people they thought were affiliated with them — in Salinas, a city with a population of 163,542, more than 100 miles south of San Francisco.
The gang used what prosecutors called military-style tactics in their hunts. They traveled in a convoy with designated shooter and spotter vehicles. They targeted Hispanic males, people with shaved heads, and people who wore blue, the rival color.
Once they identified a target, they would sometimes “hit up” their victims to confirm their gang status before shooting but did not always wait for an answer before firing, prosecutors said.
After emptying their magazines, they sped away with the spotter vehicle following to distract or intercept law enforcement, authorities said.
They were responsible for killing 11 people between 2015 and 2018, prosecutors said. Seventeen others were shot at but survived. Most of the victims were not members of a rival gang, prosecutors said. Some were not even the intended target but were hit in the crossfire.
Several of the murders took place to commemorate one of their fallen fellow gang members “and/or lift their spirits,” prosecutors said. With each increase in the body count, a defendant’s prestige in the gang went up, authorities said.
In an October 2020 news release announcing the indictments, the U.S. Attorney’s Office listed several cases that left victims killed or wounded between January 2017 and November 2018.
In January 2017, the gang spotted a group of Hispanic men outside a house party and shot up the house, killing two and wounding four. There was no evidence the victims were gang members. After the shooting, the killers led police officers on a high-speed chase, crashed, abandoned their vehicle and disappeared.
The following month, the murder squad came upon a small group of Hispanic men outside a community center and fired at least 18 shots, striking one victim in the head and killing him. They took off in a stolen SUV that had been doused in gasoline earlier that day as a precaution in case it needed to be set on fire, authorities said. The following day, they encountered another group and fired at least 20 shots in a driveway. The two victims survived but were hit in the neck, torso, and upper back.
In a case in November 2018, the gang went hunting to commemorate the birthday of a dead gang member when they spotted a man walking on a street and fired at least 35 shots, hitting him in the head and killing him.
At a news conference announcing the indictments in October 2020, then-Salinas Police Chief Adele Frése said the atrocities left residents in crippling fear — made all that much worse because the victims were “simply everyday residents of our city that happened to be in a public place while the murder squad was on a hunt.”
“These ruthless gang members have gained a living by killing innocent people,” she said. “These gang members will now have to answer to their horrific, violent crimes.”
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