Two Teenage Westside Wilmas Gang Members Plead Guilty to 2024 Shooting of "El Apache" in Chula Vista, California

"Socalj" for Borderland Beat

Two [then] 15-year-old Los Angeles-area gang members pleaded guilty Thursday to murder and attempted murder charges, admitting they were acting as hired hitmen for the Sinaloa Cartel.

During two attempts to kill the cartel's target, they wounded two people and an accomplice was killed, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

According to their plea agreements, the two teenagers, then 15-year-olds Andrew "Shooter/Felon" Nunez and Johncarlo "Dumper" Quintero, are members of the Mexican Mafia-affiliated Westside Wilmas gang from the greater Los Angeles area.

They admitted they were tapped to kill the target because they were under the age of 16 at the time, which made them ineligible to be prosecuted as adults in California under a law passed in 2018. Each gang member expected to be paid approximately $50,000, prosecutors said. But they failed in two attempts.

Targeting "El Apache"

On March 26, 2024, the young gang members drove from their homes in Wilmington, California some 120 miles to find their target at a Chili's restaurant in Chula Vista, a suburb south of San Diego. When their target was leaving the restaurant with his family around 8:50 PM, Johncarlo Quintero got out of the car and fired a single shot that struck 'Victim 1' in the leg. Quintero’s weapon then jammed, and he was unable to shoot 'Victim 1' again. 

Quintero got back into the car that Andrew Nunez was driving, and Nunez attempted unsuccessfully to hit and kill the target with the vehicle. Quintero and Nunez then fled the strip mall parking lot off East H Street and Paseo del Rey in Chula Vista. 

According to an ABC10 News article, “people in the restaurant reported a man limping into Chili's with what looked like a gunshot wound to the leg.” Officers were dispatched to the scene. “Police did not say what led to the man being shot but that he was taken to the hospital.”

At the time, the Tijuana-based news publication Zeta Tijuana revealed that the man (Victim 1) shot was allegedly the Cartel Arellano Felix (CAF) figure James Bryant Corona, better known as “El Apache.”

Apache, allegedly the right hand man of Tijuana cartel figure Pablo Edwin Huerta Nuño, “El Flaquito.”

  

The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that the target was James Bryant Corona, an alleged leader of a Tijuana based drug cell and is a dual U.S.-Mexican citizen. There are also numerous San Diego based transportation trucks and companies registered to Corona.

Apartment Shooting

Corona was patched up at a nearby hospital and headed home a few hours later. Later that night, in the early hours of March 27, 2024, the teen hitmen showed up at the intended victim’s home to finish the job. They were joined this time by an older accomplice, 28-year-old Ricardo Sanchez.

About five hours after the first attack, the teens and Sanchez went to the victim’s Salerno Luxury Rentals apartment in Chula Vista’s Otay Ranch neighborhood. All three were armed with at least one gun each, the court documents stated.

Sanchez knocked on the door, and a person described in court as a friend of the target opened the door. According to their guilty pleas, Nunez and Quintero then opened fire indiscriminately into the apartment, hitting the 24-year old friend (listed as Victim 4), who was struck by gunshots in one hand, in his arm and his face.

The friend survived the shooting and managed to fire back at the trio, striking and killing Sanchez, according to the guilty pleas.

Ricardo Sanchez, also of Wilmington, was shot and killed when the trio attempted to kill Corona at his apartment.

After that, the three fled the scene with Sanchez dying on the grass outside of the apartment following a gunshot wound to his head. Nunez and Quintero fled but were apprehended by police later that day.

At 1:30 AM, on Wednesday, March 27, a 911 emergency call was made by a woman who reported that her “friend” had just been shot and was bleeding.

Officers were dispatched to her location, which was the Salerno Luxury Rentals apartment complex on the 1300 Block of Calle Verona in Chula Vista.

The two teenagers pleaded guilty in federal court to two attempted murder charges and the murder of their accomplice, which prosecutors called a “provocative-act murder," meaning their actions were responsible for their accomplices death.

Teenage Hitmen Exploited

They also admitted they were tapped to murder Corona because they were minors and, specifically, only 15 at the time (they are currently 16 and 17-years old). According to admissions in their plea agreements, the defendants knew that if they were caught that they were ineligible to be transferred to adult status under the laws of the State of California because they were under the age of 16 at the time of the shootings.

Nunez and Quintero had talked about not being able to “catch a…707” after being arrested because of their age at the time, which referred to not being subject to adult transfer under California Welfare & Institutions Code Section 707.

“In 2018, the California Legislature enacted Senate Bill 1391, which made state prosecutions of 14- and 15-year-olds in adult criminal court a practical impossibility regardless of the seriousness of the crime,” said U.S. Attorney Adam Gordon. 

“SB 1391 created perverse incentives, and today’s plea agreements are proof that the Sinaloa Cartel and a hyper-violent criminal street gang controlled by the Mexican Mafia responded to these incentives. They recruited 15-year-olds to conduct a gangland assassination in San Diego for $50,000 each. The brutal realities of cartel and gang violence demand a response, not a reprieve. The Department of Justice will federally prosecute - as adults - juveniles who commit violent acts on behalf of cartels, the Mexican Mafia, or criminal street gangs.”

However, because the murder and attempted murder were federally prosecuted due to the gang and cartel ties, the pair were charged as adults and pleaded guilty to attempted murder in aid of racketeering and murder in aid of racketeering which can carry a punishment of life in prison or the death penalty.

“The disgraceful tactic of cartels, street gangs, and the Mexican Mafia using underage children for murderous acts to evade enhanced punishments will not be tolerated," said Mark Dargis, special agent in charge of the FBI San Diego Field Office.

Westside Wilmas 13 Gang History

Part of the guilty plea had the pair of teens admit that their actions were done to promote their standing within the Westside Wilmas gang, which also engages in drug trafficking, weapons distribution and more, prosecutors said.

Wilmington, a Harbor-area neighborhood in the south of Los Angeles is claimed by two Latino gangs, Westside and Eastside Wilmas, whose members consider Avalon Boulevard the dividing line between their territories, said Capt. Brent McGuyre of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Harbor Division.

“At the street level, they’re rival gangs,” McGuyre said. But those in the gangs’ upper ranks are “all answering to the same people” the Mexican Mafia.

A 2023 indictment charged several Mexican Mafia members, associates and Wilmas gang members.

Law enforcement believes each of the Wilmas gangs are controlled by separate Mexican Mafia members who are serving life sentences in a California state prison after each being convicted of murder. One Mexican Mafia associate directed firearm and drug sales from prison despite being sentenced to death for murder. Many of the shot callers and leaders have access to illegal cell phones and other digital devices that they use to communicate with gang members on the outside.

A mural at Will Hall Park traces the rivalry and temporary truce between the two Wilmas gang factions.

From the 1950s, until 1986, a close alliance between Westside Wilmas, Eastside Wilmas and Northside Wilmas existed. But that year, East and West Side became embroiled in a bitter rivalry resulting in several deaths, after a confrontation over a woman occurred.

The 1990s saw a brief peace treaty emerge between the Wilmington gangs following them solidifying ties to the Mexican Mafia, but it lasted only two years. In 2000, a total of 45 murders occurred in Wilmington, 39 of them were said to be gang related.

One of the Westside Wilmas (WSW) main cliques is the Will Hall Park Locos who were responsible for shooting into a crowd at a community event. In 2023, Jose "Coach" Quezada was shot and killed near a "Summer Night Lights" event in Wilmington that was intended to prevent violence, according to local media, the man had no known gang ties but was said to be a community activist volunteering at the event cooking food. Two gang members were arrested and are currently awaiting trial.

Sources ABC News, DOJ, United Gangs, Borderland Beat, Borderland Beat

Categories: chula vista, el apache, james bryant corona, sinaloa cartel, wilmas