2 Killed Execution-Style, 3rd Wounded in Valinda

Two men were shot and killed execution-style and a third man was seriously wounded after an altercation on a Valinda street early Tuesday, sheriff’s deputies said.

Glen Arenas, 35, and an unidentified man were dead on arrival at 12:40 a.m. at Terrace Plaza Medical Center in Baldwin Park, where friends had taken them. The third victim, Robert Arenas, twin brother of Glen, was in the County-USC Medical Center in critical condition with gunshot wounds to the head and back.

The two dead men had each been shot once in the head, said Terrace Plaza nursing supervisor Linda Girard.

Deputies from the Sheriff’s Information Bureau could not say what the motivation for the shooting was.

Residents of Homeward Street, a cul-de-sac across the street from Bassett High School, said they heard shots shortly after midnight on Tuesday. Valinda is an unincorporated community in the south San Gabriel Valley.

“They came and knocked on the door,” said one woman who would not give her name. “They said somebody got shot and we should call 911.”

Sheriff’s Deputy Dean Scoville said an altercation preceded the shootings, although investigators did not know what it was about.

Scoville said other witnesses had seen three men, believed to be the killers, get into a gold or tan Cadillac and leave. On Homeward Street on Tuesday, deputies impounded a dusty Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme with a sign in the back window indicating that it had recently been purchased from a second-hand car dealer. It was unclear whether the Cutlass was the victims’ car.

Ruth Hinshaw, who lives across the street from the shooting scene, said she had been in bed listening to the radio about midnight. “I heard two shots--tut, tut--just like that,” she said.

The Arenas brothers lived three blocks away from the cul-de-sac. A man and a woman who answered the door at their home refused to talk about the shooting.