Law enforcement vehicles are shown where several people were found shot to death in El Mirage, California. Photo / AP
In the latest US mass killing, deputies found the bodies of six people on Tuesday and Wednesday at a remote dirt crossroads in California’s Mojave Desert - a scene described as so grisly that Southern California TV stations blurred some of the images captured by their helicopters overhead.
Authorities responding
to a request for a wellness check reached the area off Highway 395 outside the community of El Mirage on Tuesday evening and found five of the bodies. The sixth was found Wednesday morning.
It was not immediately clear how the people died or whether they had been shot. The area is about 80km from Los Angeles and is so remote that the county sheriff called in help from the California Highway Patrol’s Aviation Division to find the scene, authorities said.
It was the country’s fifth mass killing this year, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University.
Less than a month into the new year, at least 26 people have died in those killings, which are defined as incidents in which four or more people have died within a 24-hour period, not including the killer — the same definition used by the FBI.
