Sacramento shooting victims lay on streets for 18 hours. Here’s why police waited to move them

Onlookers and some victims’ family members gathered near the corner of 9th and K streets Sunday night to watch from afar as police continued their investigation into the deadliest mass shooting in Sacramento’s history.

The bodies of the six victims remained laying where they had died early that morning.

Around 8 p.m., the crowd parted momentarily as the first of three Sacramento County Coroner’s vans drove out from the crime scene.

The bodies of the six victims remained laying where they had died for more than 18 hours while investigators worked. The reason? The enormous task of processing all the evidence, police experts said.

In a news release Monday, Sacramento Police said they had found three buildings and three vehicles that had been hit by gunfire and over 100 expended shell casings at the scene. The department said it had received more than 100 photo and video files sent by witnesses to the community evidence portal set up Sunday.

“(Investigators) probably decided not to move the bodies due to magnitude of the crime scene and all the evidence that is out there,” said Ed Obayashi, a Plumas County Sheriff’s deputy and police expert.

John McGinness, former Sacramento County Sheriff, said it is imperative for investigators to gather and process all the evidence before a body is removed from a scene. It can make or break a case, he said.

“Once the person dies, they’ve left that body and it’s now evidence and that evidence has to be treated with an abundance of concern,” he said in a phone interview with The Bee. “It has to be unmoved and unmodified, intact, unaltered. That is absolutely essential.”

Kim Gin, the Sacramento County Coroner, said coroner’s office personnel are not able to enter a crime scene until homicide investigators have cleared them to do so. She said there’s no telling how long the process takes.

“There was no delay on our part,” she said. “The detectives control the scene.”

McGinness said investigators operate with the knowledge that the content of their investigation will end up in a courtroom, and it must be airtight.

The killings of three men and three women will likely carry the possibility of the death penalty, he explained.

“The best potential use of the remains of a human whose life is taken in a violent crime is to ensure to the greatest extent possible that justice is served,” he said. “. . .the importance of treating that evidence properly takes on a life of it’s own and it’s enormous.”

This story was originally published April 4, 2022 at 3:47 PM.