After Mojave mass shooting killed 4, questions mount for families

The last message John Denardo received from his daughter came from a phone number he didn’t recognize.

Her cellphone had been stolen, she wrote, but she promised to see him in the next few days with a gift in time for his birthday.

About a week later, Faith Leighanne Rose Asbury was the only victim still breathing when paramedics entered an RV on a dirt lot in Mojave where four people had been shot. The 20-year-old was rushed to Antelope Valley Hospital, where she died the next day.

Asbury and the others — Martina Barraza Jr., 33; Darius Travon Canada, 31; and Anna Marie Hester, 34 — had eked out an existence for years on the fringes of society in the Mojave Desert. Their killings have gone relatively unremarked, lost in the noise of a deadly wave of American gun violence.

The Kern County Sheriff’s Office has released few details about the April 30 quadruple homicide; no arrests have been made, and there is no description of a suspect or suspects. The victims’ relatives said they’ve been given no updates on the status of the case, and they believe it’s because those killed were homeless and had a history of drug abuse.

“They were still people. No matter how they lived their lives, what they did, they’re still people,” said Canada’s mother, Jeanette Benson.

Days after the shooting, a neighbor showed Denardo text messages Asbury had sent to a friend the night she was killed. Asbury was scared and locked herself in the RV bathroom because someone had burst in with a gun, she wrote. Two other people were in the RV with the four victims, according to the message thread, but they left after the gunman arrived.

In the texts, Asbury pleaded for help and then said her goodbyes to the friend before she stopped responding, Denardo said.

He was upset that his daughter didn’t call the police and that the friend didn’t show him the messages sooner. He believes the gunman accused the victims of stealing a cellphone.

“Four people killed over a damn phone,” Denardo said.

When asked about the text messages or whether a stolen phone was connected to the killings, the Sheriff’s Office said that a motive had not been determined and that it would not comment about evidence in an ongoing investigation. Authorities encouraged anyone with information to contact homicide investigators and would not say whether investigators had seen Asbury’s text messages when The Times inquired about them.

“Kern County Sheriff’s Office understands that families have lost loved ones,” the agency said in a statement. “Drug use, homelessness, or any other factor does not play a role in the duty and service” the Sheriff’s Office has to investigate the homicides.

The Sheriff’s Office said it is still pursuing leads and processing evidence.

“This investigation involves 4 separate homicides that each require extensive investigation. Providing information that is factual is priority for us,” the statement said.

A father’s loss hits in waves

The RV where four people were shot to death last month in Mojave sat on a dirt lot on H Street.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

Faith Leighanne Rose Asbury lived with her father in California City, about 14 miles from the RV where she was shot.

There was a time when all they had was each other, Denardo said about his daughter.

Her mother used drugs while she was pregnant, he said, and he was granted custody of his daughter when she was a baby.

He raised her the best a single father could, Denardo said, but she had a difficult life. Asbury was sentenced to several months in juvenile hall for stealing a car, and she was the victim of sex trafficking when she was a teenager, Denardo said. She spent time in a rehabilitation facility in Kern County and wanted to be an advocate for other trafficking survivors.

“She was a jerk sometimes, but she didn’t have a mean spirit,” Denardo said.

Denardo said he was not allowed to see his daughter when she was in the hospital, though he doesn’t know if it would have made a difference.

“They didn’t let me see her while she was still breathing. I still haven’t seen her,” Denardo said more than a week after the shooting. “They said that they all got shot in the head. I can’t even give my kid an open casket.”

Rudy Arroyo, president of True Memories Car Club, washes a car at a fundraiser for the Mojave shooting victims in Lancaster.

(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

Authorities said only that the victims were shot in the upper part of their bodies. It would have been the hospital’s decision to bar Denardo from the room where his daughter was being treated, said Kern County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Lori Meza.

The Sheriff’s Office “only assumes the responsibility to seal off the room once the victim is deceased. Without being too graphic, the body becomes evidence of her own homicide,” Meza said.

To Denardo, the harsh reality of his daughter’s death sometimes hits all at once, turning on and off like the flip of a switch.

He can’t bring himself to stay at home. One night he woke in a panic and started to knock on her bedroom door. He called her name and tried to get her to come to the door just one more time.

Grieving a couple gunned down together

When Anna Marie Hester met Darius Canada in Apple Valley over 15 years ago, she didn’t immediately like him, according to his family, but his charms won her over.

She had a young son from a previous relationship whom Canada raised as his own child, and the couple went on to have two more sons.

Family members console Rhonda Canada as she speaks about her brother, Darius Canada, who was killed in Mojave on April 30.

(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)

Two weeks after the shooting, their 12-year-old and 6-year-old sons clung to their grandmother Jeanette Benson in her South Los Angeles apartment. Her worries about her grandsons, about her son, have piled up, making it difficult to sleep. Lately, she agonizes over what she doesn’t know.

On the night of the shooting, she saw a familiar RV on her television as she watched news reports about four people killed in Mojave. It looked like the place where her son lived, but she couldn’t be sure.

“Everyone who came into contact with them loved them,” Benson said as her voice broke.

Hester wasn’t close to her own family, but Benson treated her like a daughter. Hester would often call on a video chat, holding the phone up to whoever was in the room.

Darius Canada was killed along with his partner, Anna Marie Hester.

(Canada family)

“She was my baby,” Benson said with a laugh. “My Anna banana Hannah Montana.”

Canada and Hester were together for about 15 years and well-known by locals in the tiny desert community of Mojave. Rhonda Canada remembers people greeting her brother by name as she took him to the store to buy him some food.

Canada and Hester would find work through odd jobs in the community, Chris Canada said about his brother and his partner.

“They didn’t just sit around. They didn’t hurt anyone,” Chris Canada said.

“None of us know why people do what they do, why they’re homeless or why they’re on drugs,” Rhonda Canada said.

Jeanette Benson, second left, is surrounded by family at her apartment in South Los Angeles.

(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)

As the immense grief of losing their loved ones weighs on the Canada family, the lack of response from Kern County authorities feels especially painful, they said.

The family said they received only one phone call from officials, when an employee with the coroner’s office confirmed Canada’s and Hester’s deaths.

Sheriff’s officials said investigators have contacted relatives of each victim or taken statements.

Rhonda Canada said she doesn’t know how to talk about her brother’s death with his children because the family has received so little information.

“They’re going to have questions that we can’t even answer,” she said. “We don’t know what to do, what to say.”

A family searching for help

For the second time since Martina Barraza Jr.’s death, her eight sisters held a car wash to raise funds for her funeral.

One of Barraza’s five children, Annya Morelli, 16, held a sign with her mother’s picture above her head on Sierra Highway in Lancaster. She stood next to her 11-year-old sister, Natalie, among the crowd, their T-shirts emblazoned with Barraza’s face.

Annya Morelli, in the white top, stands with relatives at a fundraiser car wash in Lancaster for her mother, Martina Barraza Jr., one of the four Mojave shooting victims.

(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

Many relatives of the four shooting victims said they tried for years to help their loved ones break out of the cycle of drug abuse. Annya understood that she needed to leave California for a better life away from her mother, but she always thought about her.

“My plan was always to come back when I was older to get my mom and my siblings,” Annya said. “To give them something more. Something better.”

Annya spoke to her mother in a video call the day she was killed. Barraza was visiting her mother, Cecilia Gomez, who was taking care of Barraza’s 4-year-old daughter.

Annya didn’t speak to her mother regularly, and she didn’t know when she would see her again. She wished her a happy Mother’s Day even though it was more than a week away.

“She told me she loved me,” Annya said. “She was a very strong girl, and she held it all on her 10 toes.”

Annya Morelli, 16, has her mother’s name tattooed on her forearm.

(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

Barraza was loud, the life of the party. Annya said her mother told bad jokes and refused to not laugh at her own puns.

After Barraza’s death, her sisters are wondering whether their family will be eligible for victim assistance services through the county or the state.

That is still unclear because the investigation is ongoing, Kern County Assistant Dist. Atty. Joseph Kinzel said.

The district attorney’s office will offer help to the families, but Kinzel could not say whether his office had reached out to a list of relatives provided by The Times.

During the reporting of this story, a representative from the California Victim Compensation Board contacted Canada’s and Barraza’s relatives to determine whether they are eligible to receive funds from the state, which will hinge on the findings of the homicide investigation and whether they meet the state’s standards for victims. Benson said her family would try to relay information to Hester’s family, and Denardo did not reply to questions about whether he had received a follow-up call.

Kern County Supervisor Zack Scrivner, who represents Mojave, did not respond to requests for comment about the killings.

“We’re going to keep demanding justice for her,” Barraza’s sister Vanesa Sandoval said. “We have to constantly speak about what happened so they’re not forgotten.”

Another sister, Glenda Gaxiola, said the county coroner’s office called her several days after the killing. By then, the family already knew Barraza was one of the victims, but the official wanted to know if Gaxiola could describe any of Barraza’s tattoos.

Barraza had all eight of her sisters’ names on her arm. She also had her mother’s name tattooed.

The coroner’s official described a tattoo at the back of Barraza’s neck: the name Cecilia.

“That’s my mom’s name,” Gaxiola said. “That broke us right down, because it was our names. I said, ‘That’s us.’”

After the shootings, Annya also got a name tattooed on her forearm: her mother’s name, Martina, surrounded by a flock of doves.