WESTMINSTER : 2 Men Found Hacked to Death in Pickup

In a brutal murder meant to “send a message to the drug community,” authorities said, a 27-year-old Westminster man and his unidentified male companion were found hacked to death in the bed of a pickup truck 40 miles east of Tacoma, Wash.

Pierce County sheriff’s investigators said Thursday that they have identified the body of Manuel Medina of Westminster. The victims were found early Sunday by campers who noticed a foul odor emanating from the pickup, authorities said.

“There was a canopy over the truck, and they were in the back bed,” said Jane Weber, chief investigator for the Pierce County medical examiner’s office. “One was dressed in black briefs, and the other (Medina) had on green camouflage sweat pants.”

The men had been dead about three days when their bodies were found off a dirt road near Greenwater, a wooded, rustic area popular among campers. Officials said they finally identified Medina’s body by sending a facsimile of a photograph of his body to his wife in Westminster.

They were the second hatchet-style slayings in the Tacoma area this year. Authorities said they are examining the possibility that the two sets of killings are related.

“I know we had one the first of the year that was a double--two black men chopped to death with a hatchet,” Weber said.

Neither she nor police provided further details of the earlier killings.

Medina died of “multiple hatchet wounds to the head,” Weber said. The second victim found in the truck has not been identified, but authorities said they suspect that he is from Tijuana.

According to Weber, Medina’s relatives told authorities that he had gone to the Tacoma area “on business,” but she would not elaborate. It was unclear how long the victims had been in the Tacoma area before the slayings.

However, because of the sheer brutality of the killings, Pierce County Sheriff’s Deputy Curt Benson said he believes that the slayings were meant as revenge killings--a possible pay-back on a drug deal gone sour.

“Most likely,” Benson said, “they either were ripping off drugs or ripping off money. . . . We look at the brutality of this kind of murder as sending a message to other individuals that skimming someone else’s drugs or cash will not be tolerated.”

Benson said detectives have no suspects but have gathered evidence suggesting that the victims were “involved in drugs.”

While searching the truck, he said, investigators found a secret cutout area beneath the truck bed.

“We didn’t find anything in there at the time, but our drug dog keyed on this, and he got very excited,” Benson said.

The truck belongs to a San Bernardino resident whom authorities would not identify.

Benson said detectives suspect that the victims were involved in drug trafficking between California and Washington. “The I-5 corridor is a major drug route between California and here,” he said.

At the house in Westminster where Medina lived, his wife declined to comment.