STANTON, CALIFORNIA: Three gang members have been arrested in connection to the brutal killing of a good-samaritan pizza driver who was shot while trying to rescue an elderly man in June 2022. More than a year later, police finally arrested Henry Diep Le, 19, Adrian Castaneda, 19, and Damian Ivan Mayorga, 18, on murder charges stemming from the death of 49-year-old Juan Cristalinas.
Le was taken into custody near the Mexican border, while Castaneda and Mayorga were arrested at a residence in Orange County on Wednesday, July 5, Stanton Police Services Chief Charlie Walters noted, according to NBC. Orange County Sheriff's Department previously reported that Cristalinas, of Santa Ana, was on his way to deliver a pizza on June 28, 2022, when he stumbled upon multiple men attacking the 76-year-old man. He immediately stopped his car and ran to rescue the elderly man but got shot to death during the scuffle.
‘He was trying to be a good son’
Deputies responded to the 7000 block of Lessue Avenue in Stanton at 7.21 pm and found the two men in the street suffering from gunshot wounds. Both victims were transported to a local hospital, where Cristalinas succumbed to his injuries just a few hours later. Sally Cox, a neighbor who heard the gunshots, told KTLA that she initially thought several fireworks had gone off. But moments later when she went to answer her door, a neighbor notified her that there had been a shooting and her pizza delivery driver was the victim.
Following the arrests, Walters described Cristalinas’ death as ‘tragic,’ saying "He was trying to be a good father. He was trying to be a good son. He was doing his job. He did nothing wrong, and that’s the part that’s a little shocking about this case." Walters said investigators were still trying to determine why the suspects attacked the 76-year-old in the first place. “We are a safer community. We’ve got these three off the street. That’s the No 1 priority,” he said. All three suspects have been booked on suspicion of murder. It was not immediately clear whether any of them had retained an attorney who could speak on their behalf.
‘He was the kind of person who always stood up for others'
A few hours after Cristalinas' death, his son Ivan Cristalinas paid him a moving tribute, saying he was grateful he shared a few laughs with his father. "A lot of people would describe him as serious and kind of scary looking, because, you know, he's kind of big and had no hair," he said with a smile. "But he had the biggest heart. It's safe to say that what he did is actually what describes him the most because he would go out of his way to help somebody," he told ABC 7. Later, Cristalinas' family described him as a "hardworking, loving man," who did 2 jobs and spent his weekends working on cars as a mechanic. "He was the kind of person who always stood up for others and wasn't scared of doing the right thing. Although we are proud of how brave his last act of kindness is, we are all devastated and completely broken with this loss," the family said in a GoFundMe campaign.
