Grant County Deputies Investigate Triple Murder Near Mattawa

By Chelsea Kopta

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Three murders near Mattawa. Two crime scenes. One connected killer. Investigators are looking for a person of interest but Action News found out this could be a symptom of a growing gang explosion in Grant County.

Story Published: Dec 15, 2009 at 6:52 PM PST

MATTAWA, WA -- Washington State Crime lab workers, Grant Sheriff's Deputies and Mattawa Police had a lot of ground to cover Tuesday. Three people were murdered overnight, in two different crime scenes, spread out over several miles in rural Grant County.

Grant County Deputies got word of shots fired around 9:15 Monday night at a mobile home in the 21000 block of road 24.7. When deputies arrived, they found one young man was already dead, a second one was barely alive. He died soon after. A third man, who also lived at the home, was found dead on Road 26 SW, about two miles away.

All of the victims were Latino men in their 20s. By late Tuesday night, their names had still not been released. Now, Grant County Sheriff's Deputies are looking for J. Guadalupe Martinez-Lopez as a person interest. They said he was likely driving a light blue Ford Ranger with California plates.

"I was kind of surprised," Bow Eckenberg said, who lives nearby in the Desert Aire community.

Undersheriff Turley didn't say it was gang related but doesn't think it was random. And what's worse, this could be part of a scarier trend.

"Families are concerned that there's a tremendous amount of activities, violence between here, Mattawa, Sunnyside, the Yakima Valley area and the Tri Cities," Turley said.

These murders amount to the sixth this year. They're part of a long struggle, deputies said, to fight growing gangs and drug trafficking in the area. "We have gangs, we have drugs, we have it all. We have violence we have thefts. It is unfortunate."

So far, Turley's office has identified between 650 and 1,000 known or associated gang members in the county. Most are home-grown. And where they are gangs, there are drugs.

"The drug trade is just overwhelming," he followed. "Wether it's cocaine, methamphetamine, whatever it might be."

Bow Eckenberg believes the gang violence is spilling over into the rest of community. "It already affected normal life. It's not just gang violence. people breaking into houses," Eckenberg said.

Keeping up with the crime is a challenge. Grant County only has around 50 officers. Mattawa has just four in a community of up to 5,000.

That amounts to about 1,250 people per officer. That's why law enforcement is turning to Community Watch for help. They now have hundreds of members. It's a big step toward ganging up on gang crime in Grant County.