Stockton Knew Hard Times, but Nothing Like an ‘Unimaginable’ Killing Spree

A suspect was charged Tuesday in a series of murders in the California city, which has faced municipal bankruptcy, crippling crime waves and decades of setbacks.

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By Livia Albeck-Ripka, Shawn Hubler and Holly Secon

Oct. 18, 2022

STOCKTON, Calif. — Stockton, a city of about 320,000 in California’s Central Valley, has spent decades enduring some of the state’s hardest knocks, from municipal bankruptcy to crippling crime waves.

And it plunged into a deepening anxiety in recent weeks with reports that a serial killer was stalking its streets. The police linked six killings in the city and one in a nearby county to a single perpetrator. Some residents stopped buying gas after sunset. Others would not let their children out at night.

At a hearing in the San Joaquin County Superior Court on Tuesday, a suspect in the killings, Wesley Brownlee, was charged with three counts of murder. The police said they arrested him around 2 a.m. on Saturday, while he was armed and “out hunting.” Mr. Brownlee also faces weapons charges, with prosecutors saying he had used an untraceable firearm known as a “ghost gun.”

“The firearm is linked to those three murders,” said Elton Grau, a deputy district attorney in the San Joaquin District Attorney’s Office. Cellular data associated with Mr. Brownlee, he added, had also placed him at the locations of the three killings.

In a news conference after the hearing, the county’s district attorney, Tori Verber Salazar, said her office was still processing evidence for the other three killings and the attempted murder of a woman who was shot but survived. Additional charges were likely in the near future, she said.

At the hearing, Mr. Brownlee appeared stone-faced as Judge John Soldati of the San Joaquin County Superior Court read his charges. The surviving victim and families of those killed were present, and some appeared on the verge of tears.

“I couldn’t even look at him,” Jerry Lopez, the brother of one of the victims, Lorenzo Lopez, said of Mr. Brownlee after the hearing. Of the murder, he added, “It’s something unimaginable.”

Judge Soldati ordered that Mr. Brownlee be held without bail. The minimum sentence on convictions for the charges, he said, would be life in prison. The maximum, the death penalty.

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