Murderer convicted of 4 brutal Sinaloa Cartel-related slayings gets life without possibility of parole

A man convicted of four brutal slayings in Orange County ordered by another man seeking revenge after getting cut out of Sinaloa Cartel dealings was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, according to prosecutors.

On Nov. 9, 2015, Raul Gastellum Flores and some accomplices went to an apartment in Orange where they held three of the victims -- Antonio Medina, Fernando Meza and Edgar Berrelleza -- at gunpoint and forced them into an SUV, the O.C. District Attorney's Office said. He and two other gunmen held the three victims hostage as they awaited orders from Rosario Roman-Lopez, who prosecutors describe as the mastermind behind the killings.

He had recruited Flores, who drove from Phoenix, Arizona to Southern California to carry out the murders, equipped with several handguns and AK-47s with plans to murder Edgar Berrelleza and his brother Joel unless they paid out tens of thousands of dollars. Prosecutors said Roman-Lopez wanted retribution against the Berrelleza brothers for cutting him out of their cartel-run drug business. 

As Flores drove the SUZ, Meza and Medina were both shot multiple times in the chest and head and Berrelleza was shot in the head and back multiple times. Flores' other accomplices got out of the vehicle but he stayed inside.

He kept driving with the three dead bodies still inside the SUV until he reached Oakmont Street in Orange. There, prosecutors said, he set the car on fire while still behind the wheel and managed to jump from the vehicle while it was still moving and into another car waiting for him. When the car was lit ablaze, Meza was still alive as authorities said soot was found inside his lungs.

Surveillance video captured Flores jump out of the SUV while it was still on fire. Later, just after 2 p.m. that day, bystanders saw the car fire and tried putting it out with a garden hose. Once it was extinguished by firefighters, police discovered two dead bodies in the back seat and another in the front passenger seat.

From there, Flores and his accomplices went on to kill Joel Berrelleza. They forced him into his Pontiac, shooting him three times inside the car while they drove and using a cellphone to record his last, dying breaths. For six days, his body remained inside the car. Eventually, someone passing by reported to police that there was a man sleeping for several days inside his car.

According to prosecutors, some of the accomplices and Roman-Lopez stole an amount of heroin worth more than $60,000, along with safes and money, from an apartment in Orange where Joel Berrelleza had been kidnapped and tied up before being killed.

"These murders were not intended just to kill; they were carried out in a way to maximize the terror for the murdered while maximizing the pleasure for the murderers," Orange County DA Todd Spitzer said in a statement from his office. "Someone who takes such delight in taking the lives of others as a hired gun is someone who should not spend a single minute more outside the walls of a California state prison."