Shots Kill 2 Brothers and Woman After Party

Two brothers and a young woman were shot to death early Sunday while standing near their parked van in Los Serranos, a small community southwest of Chino, San Bernardino County sheriff’s investigators reported.

A third man survived the 5 a.m. barrage of gunfire, which occurred about 2 1/2 hours after the victims left a party where at least one fistfight had broken out.

Detectives said later they had not linked the party fight and the shootings, but one witness told reporters she thought one of the victims had been involved.

Not Gang-Related

The victims were not associated with a gang, and the crimes apparently were not gang-related, said Lt. Blake Brinkerhoff.

The survivor, an 18-year-old whom detectives declined to identify, did not see the assailants and could not identify them, Brinkerhoff said. “The survivor was inside the van,” the detective said. “He heard a brief argument and when the gunfire went off, he hit the deck.”

The assailants also sprayed the rear of the van with gunfire, killing a dog, Brinkerhoff said.

The survivor pulled his friends into the van and fled to a nearby gas station, where an attendant called police.

Identification of Dead

The dead were identified as Richard D. Rayburn, 28, Cynthia Speers, 23, Rayburn’s girlfriend, and Todd Moore, 23, Rayburn’s half-brother.

Rayburn’s parents live just blocks from the gas station at Carbon Canyon Road and Pipe Line Avenue where the three were taken after the shooting. The house where the party took place is also just a few blocks away.

Brinkerhoff said Rayburn and Speers had no permanent address and had apparently been living in the van. Moore had returned to the area about a week ago after living in Utah, Brinkerhoff said.

Detectives said they were not sure precisely where the killings occurred because the survivor, who arrived in Southern California from Oklahoma just a week ago, was too disoriented to say. The confusion of the survivor has also made it difficult for investigators to link the shootings with a fight that broke out after the party that the four attended in the 15500 block of Cecelia Street, Brinkerhoff said.

However, Deedee Garcia, 17, at whose house the party was held, said she saw a man who she thought was Moore fighting with another man in the street near her home at about 2:30 a.m.

Brinkerhoff said he is convinced that the killers are connected with residents of the lower-middle-class community of Los Serranos.

“Everybody down there knows everybody else,” he said. “The killer is going to be somebody who knows somebody down there, and it’s all going to be related to that area. It’s just a matter of doing our homework.”