Three women, one man die in Mojave mobile home shooting

Three women and a man were shot to death Sunday evening in the Kern County community of Mojave, according to authorities.

Detectives were on the scene early Monday morning where the shooting took place in the western Mojave Desert about 50 miles east of Bakersfield, officials said.

Investigators did not provide any information about a suspect but said there is no immediate threat to the community, said Lori Meza, public information officer with the Kern County Sheriff’s Office.

Deputies were dispatched to the 15900 block of H Street in Mojave around 11:20 p.m. Sunday after reports of a shooting, Meza said. Deputies found the four victims inside an RV residence.

“When deputies arrived, they located four adults suffering from gunshot wounds,” Meza said. “Three were declared deceased at the scene and the fourth victim was transported to a local hospital where they were later pronounced deceased.”

A man and two women died at the scene, according to authorities. The victims’ identities were not released pending notification of next of kin.

Investigators did not find any weapons at the scene. They have determined what caliber of bullet was used in the shooting, Meza said, but officials are not releasing that information at this time.

There was no police tape Monday morning at the dirt lot where the shooting took place, separated from Mojave’s main drag by railroad tracks.

Two deteriorating recreational vehicles and a trailer were parked in the lot, surrounded by piles of bicycle parts, scrap metal and other debris.

Tina Hayden took in the scene, brought by the news that the daughter of one of her friends was among the victims. The woman, in her late 30s and a mother of at least five children, had lived in one of the RVs, Hayden said.

Two of the other victims, a couple, were also homeless, splitting time between the dirt lot and another RV parked in an alley near the center of town, she said. “They’re all on crystal meth,” Hayden said. “This is all part of drugs, sad to say.”

For the most part, Mojave is a tightknit community where people know and look out for each other, she said. But she cannot help but notice a surge of drug abuse — seemingly all methamphetamine — relegate a growing population to the city’s fringes.

“I’ve seen kids graduate and just go straight down. And it’s the crystal meth,” Hayden said.

The killings have shaken Mojave, she said. “I don’t even want my kids outside. I kept my granddaughter home from school today.”

As Hayden spoke to a Times reporter, a couple pulled up in a battered pickup truck with scrap metal piled in the bed.

“A hauler,” Hayden remarked, explaining that some trawl the city for metal to salvage.

An old motorcycle, a broken-down dune buggy and a couch were splayed nearby. Trash clung to the scrub in the brown field surrounding the lot, fluttering in the winds that blew the turbines off a field of windmills to the west.

Kenny Heller, whose property abuts the crime scene, heard the shots through a back window he’d left open to catch the night breeze — four rounds in quick succession.

It wasn’t unusual to hear shots coming from the dirt lot and the RVs parked there, the 62-year-old said in his front yard, drawing on a cigarette.

The first RV showed up about a year and a half ago. The dirt lot abuts a property where the RV occupant’s grandmother lived, Heller said, but she owed taxes on the house, which has since been fenced off. The windows and doors are boarded up.

Police would come every once in a while and red-tag the RVs, and people from the real estate company that owned the lot told the occupants to leave, according to Heller. But they stayed, the mounds of junk growing, syringes cast off in the dirt, he said.

“There’s people in and out of there every day, all day.” Asked to describe Mojave, the 15-year resident said: “Getting worse.”