SAN JACINTO – A man and woman opened fire on guards at an entrance to an Indian reservation and fled into the hills, where they were killed in a gunbattle with sheriff's deputies and a SWAT team, authorities said yesterday. It was the second deadly gunfight involving deputies on the reservation in five days.
The motive for the Monday night attack was not known, said Riverside County Sheriff's Department spokesman Dennis Gutierrez.
The dead man was identified as Joseph Arres, 36, of San Jacinto, Gutierrez said. The woman's name was not released yesterday. At least one of the dead was a tribal member, said a spokesman for the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs' Southern California Agency. He would not say which one.
The gunfire began at a guard station on a road near a casino operated by the Soboba Band of Luiseño Indians, who have a 3,170-acre reservation on the foothills of the San Jacinto Mountains, about 87 miles north of San Diego. The guards and the deputies involved in the shootout were not injured.
The assailants used a Russian-made SKS rifle that is illegal in California and an AR-15 rifle with a high-capacity drum magazine, Gutierrez said. The tribal security guards called 911. A sheriff's helicopter and deputies on the ground were fired upon, he said. The rear window of a patrol car was shot out.
The attackers fled seven miles up a dirt road into the hills, where they were eventually killed in a standoff with five deputies and four members of a SWAT team, Gutierrez said. He would not say how many shots were fired.
It was the second fatal shooting by deputies on the reservation in less than a week. On Thursday, deputies killed tribal member Eli Morillo, 26, after he began shooting at them with an assault rifle. The Press-Enterprise of Riverside reported that Morillo was a member of a prominent Soboba family.
The newspaper reported that sheriff's deputies were patrolling the reservation early Thursday when they came under fire from assault rifles. Morillo was killed, and a search was launched for two other people. Morillo's brother, Peter, 27, was killed in 2002 in a gunfight with sheriff's deputies who went to his Riverside County home to check on the welfare of two children, the newspaper said. Two deputies were wounded, but recovered.
