Deadly triple shooting at apartment complex stemmed from robbery, Sacramento sheriff says
A shooting that left three dead stemmed from an attempted robbery, the Sacramento County Sheriff's Office said on Monday.All three men who died were in their 20s, and the sheriff's office said it arrested a fourth man in connection with the shooting. However, 18-year-old Jaylen Davis is not facing a homicide charge.The sheriff's office said its communications center got a call around 7 a.m. Sunday at the Lance Apartments along El Camino Avenue for a report of an apartment with apparent bullet holes and deceased people possibly inside. Deputies who went there found the three men, each with gunshot wounds.Guns were next to their bodies, and deputies detained Davis at the scene, the sheriff's office said.Since the shooting, Sacramento County Sheriff Jim Cooper has been publicly criticizing Mercy Housing, which runs the apartment complex near Landwood Way. Cooper said Mercy was not immediately forthcoming with handing over surveillance video that detectives wanted for the investigation. The sheriff's office eventually obtained the footage with a search warrant and explained that it helped detectives identify a key witness they later located and questioned. A news release by the sheriff's office claims that the delay from Mercy led detectives "to process the scene in a manner that was unnecessarily more time-consuming than if they had spoken to the witness earlier."KCRA 3 has reached out to Mercy for comment in response to the sheriff's claims about a delayed investigation. As of Monday, we have not yet heard back a response.Through their investigation, the sheriff's office said it learned that one of the men killed was being robbed by two other men. During the fight, one of the robbers fatally shot the man. A fourth man who lives at the complex then fired his weapon and killed the two robbers, the sheriff's office said. The witness detectives spoke with also confirmed the details of the robbery-turned-shooting.Despite the shooting being a violent crime, the sheriff's office said it consulted with the Sacramento County District Attorney's Office and will not pursue homicide-related charges at this time.The sheriff's office said all four men involved in the shooting had prior felony convictions and were prohibited from possessing guns.Davis was arrested on firearm-related charges and was on active probation and had an ankle monitor.Details were not released on whether the four men knew each other. The identities of the men who died were also not yet released.In earlier briefings on Sunday, the sheriff's office said it did not have any suspect information and did not mention that they had detained someone in connection with the shooting, contrary to the details of the agency's Monday news release.Lance Apartments is described on Mercy Housing's website as a provider of "safe, quality low-income housing and affordable resident services for those in need."See news happening? Send us your photos or videos if it’s safe to do so at kcra.com/upload.See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel
