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Three men have been arrested and charged with murder in connection with the shocking triple homicide of three women in a Los Angeles neighborhood earlier this year.
Dejean Thompkins, 28; Dontae Williams, 22; and Daries Stanford, 28, were each charged with three counts of murder and six counts of attempted murder in connection with the Jan. 28 shooting in Beverly Crest that took the lives of three women, authorities announced Friday.
It’s not clear if the three have retained counsel. The L.A. public defender’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday.
The men and their victims were from the Chicago area, Los Angeles police and prosecutors said during a news conference Friday.
“One thing that can be said is that the violence that occurs in Chicago today is having an affect on all of us, and we’ve become aware that it’s affecting other states as well,” Los Angeles Police Department Capt. Jonathan L. Tippet said.
Tippet said the three suspects are “involved in” and “connected to” a gang, but did not provide further details, The Associated Press reported.
The arrests in April and May took place in Chicago; Gary, Indiana; and New York City, authorities said. Charges were filed May 8 to trigger arrest warrants, prosecutors said, though the filings were announced Friday.
The victims were previously identified as Iyana Hutton, 33; Nenah Davis, 29; and Destiny Sims, 26.
The three women were returning to a vacation rental from a concert early that morning and were in a vehicle when shots rang out in what prosecutors described as an ambush of semiautomatic gunfire.
The three were not the intended targets of the attack, Tippet said, according to the AP.
Four others were injured but survived, officials said. Two others were uninjured despite being targeted, prosecutors alleged. The possible motive was not revealed.
The women were pronounced dead at the scene.
The violence rocked the Beverly Crest community of eight-figure estates that house many celebrities.
On Friday, officials said one of the suspects, Thompkins, faces an additional murder charge. He is accused of gunning down a man identified as Julian Bynum, 30, outside an apartment complex in nearby North Hollywood on Dec. 16.
Prosecutors say the three defendants face special circumstance allegations that could mean life without the possibility of parole if they’re successfully convicted.
Those circumstances include lying in wait and committing multiple murders, the L.A. District Attorney’s Office alleged in a statement Friday.
“This is another example of the widespread damage that can be done by gun violence,” District Attorney George Gascón said in that statement. “We must do more – whether it is through legislation or education — to stop mass shootings.”
Arraignment will be scheduled in the upcoming days, Gascón’s office said.
The arrests came as Chicago grappled with another deadly spring that included back-to-back weekends last month in which the number of shooting victims was in the double-digits.
Erick Mendoza contributed.
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