Youth Arrested in Slayings of 3 at Kearny Mesa Hotel

A 16-year-old San Diego boy has been arrested in connection with the killings of three people found shot in the head last month in a Kearny Mesa hotel.

Homicide Lt. John Welter said Anaheim police took the boy into custody without incident at a relative’s residence in Anaheim about 10 p.m. Wednesday. The boy was turned over to San Diego homicide detectives who brought him to Juvenile Hall, where he is being held on suspicion of murder.

Welter said investigators allege that the shootings were tied to a “personal issue” between the boy and the victims, whom he knew. No drugs or gang affiliations were involved, Welter said.

The boy, who lives in San Diego but often resides with family in Anaheim, has been attending school in San Diego since the killings, Welter said.

Found dead May 4 at the Holiday Inn, 8110 Aero Drive, were Jennifer Louise Lucas, 18; Moses Blackman Gadson, 19, and Derrick Lamont Robinson, 19, all of San Diego.

Carlos Armour, chief of the district attorney’s juvenile division, said prosecutors will decide today whether to ask a Juvenile Court judge Monday to order that the boy be tried as an adult on murder charges.

“With this number of victims, and a suspect who is 16 years old, we would treat him as an adult,” Armour said.

Welter declined Thursday to provide details of the investigators’ case against the boy, saying detectives were still interviewing witnesses. He also said more arrests may be made.

At the time of the shootings, witnesses said they noticed two people waiting in the hotel lobby. Witnesses also saw a man fleeing the hotel.

“Our investigators believe this is the person who did the shooting,” Welter said of the boy.

Lucas, one of the victims, was an unemployed mother of 19-month-old and 3-year-old sons who had recently broken up with her boyfriend, the father of her two boys. She had rented the hotel room while she was looking for an apartment, her mother said.

Welter declined to comment on whether the nearly 50 phone calls hotel officials said were made to Lucas’ room were tied to the shootings. Lucas’ mother speculated after the shootings that the calls may have been associated with her daughter’s search for an apartment.