Strawberry Field Worker Shot Dead; 2 Held After Chase

Two gunmen shot and killed a farm worker picking strawberries in a Cypress field Thursday morning, sprayed the area with gunfire and fled in a car, pursued by two other field hands in a pickup truck.

Moments later, Cypress police arrested two men and booked them on suspicion of murder. Paramedics who rushed to the field on the southwest corner of Valley View Street and Katella Avenue said Gumaro Pineda, 33, was killed instantly.

The two under arrest were identified as Odon Borja, 29, of Cypress and Juan Torres, 24, of Hawaiian Gardens.

According to police and witnesses, the shooting took place after two men parked a station wagon in a dirt driveway Thursday and walked about 100 to 150 yards toward the field where Pineda was working. The two men shot him several times in the head and the chest, police said.

The two then fired a brief shower of bullets into the air and at the workers, who had fallen to the ground trying to avoid the gunfire.

“We ran there, we ran here. We threw ourselves to the ground,” said Juan Diaz Molina, a friend of Pineda from his hometown in the Mexican state of Guerrero.

“I heard them scream, ‘They killed Gumaro. They killed him,’ ” added Homero Torivia Sanchez, Pineda’s cousin and roommate.

When the pair fled in the station wagon, two other workers gave chase in the pickup. As the station wagon turned a corner from Katella Avenue onto Valley View Street, the assailants again fired at the workers, Molina and Sanchez said.

The two men in pursuit flagged down a police car, which already had spotted the station wagon and was about to detain it, according to Lt. Robert A. Bandurraga. Cypress police then arrested the two suspects without incident in a cul-de-sac on Rome Street, Bandurraga said. Friends of the dead man said he was the fourth member of his family to be slain. Three brothers were gunned down in Mexico several years ago, they said.

Police have not determined a motive for the killing but they said they suspect it was revenge.

Molina said the dead man had no enemies and was not involved in any feud. He arrived each summer from a small “rancho” called Javali to work on farms.

Pineda has a wife and two small children back home, said Molina, who described his friend as “a good man,” adding: “It makes one sad. It makes you want to cry.”