Emmanuel Lopez thought he had escaped the worst evening of his life when masked gunmen opened hearth at a baby’s birthday celebration in Stockton on November 29.

The mass shooting killed four people and wounded thirteen others, including his nine-year-old daughter, who was shot in the head.

One month later, the thirty-three-year-old man was lifeless, gunned down at an house complicated in his hometown on December 28 in what police are calling a presumably gang-related taking pictures.

Lopez watched his greatest buddy, Susano Archuleta, die in his arms after the twenty-one-year-old was shot within the neck whereas attempting to guard different partygoers from the barrage of gunfire that investigators say got here from a minimum of 5 totally different weapons.

“My brother died in my arms,” Lopez advised the Los Angeles Times within the aftermath of the assault that left his daughter combating for her life with a gunshot wound to her head.

Lopez was amongst multiple hundred friends on the birthday celebration for the two-year-old daughter of Stockton rapper NanoMB, when chaos erupted on the Monkey Space occasion middle.

NanoMB, stays in custody on parole violations after a choose dominated in December that his gang affiliations and felony historical past outweighed claims that he was a sufferer of the taking pictures.

The twenty-two-year-old rapper is linked to each the Asian Boyz and Muddy Boyz gangs, in line with prosecutors, who argued that he knowingly allowed gang members like MBNel to attend his daughter’s birthday celebration regardless of being on parole.

San Joaquin County Sheriff Patrick Withrow revealed that over fifty pictures had been fired through the focused assault, which killed three kids together with Archuleta and despatched shockwaves by way of the Stockton neighborhood.

The mass taking pictures investigation stays unsolved with no arrests made, in line with the latest replace from sheriff’s officers on January 1, 2026.

MBNel’s dad beforehand stated that gunmen had been focusing on his son, who had gone into hiding in December.

“My deepest condolences to the families who had to bury their children, and to the innocent lives lost,” MBNel wrote on social media. “What happened in Stockton has left families carrying an unimaginable loss.”

Law enforcement officials say there is no indication that Lopez’s death is connected to the Stockton mass shooting, despite the timing and his presence at the November party.

“At this time, there is nothing to indicate that the two shootings are related,” sheriff’s spokesperson Brent advised Stocktonia, whereas declining to verify Lopez’s attendance on the birthday celebration.

Stockton has skilled a minimum of ten further shootings because the Thanksgiving weekend bloodbath, together with a deadly incident at a comfort retailer that killed seventeen-year-old Noah Juan Auburn simply days earlier than Lopez’s dying.

Governor Gavin Newsom deployed California Highway Patrol officers to Stockton as part of “crime suppression” teams targeting repeat offenders in high-crime areas.

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