Stockton Police Arrest Wesley Brownlee in Serial Shootings That Killed Six Men
Detectives had been following the 43-year-old when they stopped him at 2 a.m., armed, in dark clothes, with a mask around his neck. Police said he was out hunting.
Published
For half a year Stockton had been looking for a man in black who came out of the dark, shot someone standing or sitting alone, and was gone. At about 2 a.m. on Saturday, October 15, 2022, police say they stopped him. Detectives who had Wesley Brownlee, 43, of Stockton, under surveillance pulled him over in a traffic stop and took him into custody. He was armed with a gun, dressed in dark clothing, and had a mask around his neck, Police Chief Stanley McFadden said.
Officers "determined early this morning, he was on a mission to kill," McFadden told reporters at an afternoon briefing. "He was out hunting." He went further: "We are sure we stopped another killing."
Brownlee was booked for homicide, and a SWAT team later raided his apartment. McFadden credited tips from people in the community with putting investigators onto him.
Police believed one man was responsible for the fatal shootings of five men in Stockton and a sixth in Oakland, and for wounding a woman, in attacks reaching back to April 2021. Investigators had said ballistics tests and video evidence tied the shootings together, though they had not said whether the same gun was used in every one.
The first death was in Oakland. Juan Vasquez Serrano, 39, was killed there on April 10, 2021. Six days later, on April 16, a 46-year-old woman was shot in Stockton and survived. Then the shootings stopped for more than a year, and when they resumed in Stockton in the summer of 2022 they came faster: Paul Yaw, 35, on July 8; Salvador Debudey Jr., 43, on August 11; Jonathan Rodriguez Hernandez, 21, on August 30; Juan Cruz, 52, on September 21; and Lawrence Lopez Sr., 54, on September 27.
San Joaquin County District Attorney Tori Verber Salazar said Brownlee would be arraigned on Tuesday. On the day of his arrest the exact charges had not been decided. He had been arrested, not charged, and the case against him had yet to be tested in any court.
What followed. On Tuesday, October 18, 2022, the District Attorney's Office charged Brownlee with three counts of murder, in the deaths of Jonathan Rodriguez Hernandez, Juan Cruz and Lawrence Lopez Sr., along with one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm and one of possessing ammunition. He did not enter a plea and was ordered back to court on November 14, the Associated Press reported. On December 27, 2022, prosecutors filed an amended complaint adding four murder counts, for Paul Yaw, Salvador Debudey Jr., the Oakland victim (by then identified as Juan Alexander Vasquez) and Mervin Harmon, who was killed in Oakland in the early hours of April 16, 2021, and an attempted-murder count for the woman who survived, according to CBS Sacramento. Harmon's death had not been publicly tied to the series when Brownlee was arrested. Published accounts differ on some details: Juan Cruz is 52 in the Associated Press report and 42 in CBS Sacramento's timeline, and Jonathan Rodriguez Hernandez also appears as Jonathan Hernandez Rodriguez. Charges are accusations, not findings of guilt; Brownlee is presumed innocent.
Sources
- California man charged in 3 slayings linked to serial killer, Associated Press, via KSAT
- Suspect arrested in California serial killing investigation, CBS News
- Suspected Stockton serial killer Wesley Brownlee faces 4 additional murder charges, attempted murder charge, CBS Sacramento, Madisen Keavy