Deputies arrest man accused of killing mother in Sacramento County after standoff near Galt
Homicide detectives have arrested a man suspected of killing his mother after she was found dead with bruises at a home in a rural area of south Sacramento County.
John Martinez, 29, was arrested on suspicion of homicide in his 64-year-old mother’s death, Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Sgt. Amar Gandhi announced Thursday morning. He was taken into custody Wednesday night inside the home after a standoff with deputies that lasted over five hours.
The incident occurred at the home in the 11500 block of Alta Mesa Road, north of Galt and south of Wilton. Gandhi said detectives believe Martinez hit his mom with a shovel repeatedly and tried to run over her with his car as she lay wounded on the ground.
The sheriff’s spokesman said Martinez then tried to set her body on fire several times, but was never really able to get the fire going. He said Martinez then went into the home and didn’t come out until deputies went in and found him.
“Pretty gruesome and horrific details,” Gandhi said about the homicide. “A lot to unpack, we don’t know what the motivation was.”
The Sacramento County Coroner’s Office will release the woman’s name after her family has been notified.
About 2:40 p.m. Wednesday, a man doing work on the property spotted Martinez’s mother on the ground in the home’s driveway and called the fire department to check on her condition, Gandhi said. Firefighters arrived at the home and saw “very suspicious circumstances” and informed the Sheriff’s Office.
Deputies were called to the home to assist firefighters with an incident at that location, according to archived audio dispatch calls reviewed by The Sacramento Bee.
Authorities found a victim, described as woman wearing burned clothes and suffering from severe injuries to her face, according to archived audio dispatch calls reviewed by The Bee.
Gandhi said deputies “fairly quickly” confirmed the woman was a victim of a homicide; it appeared she had been assaulted in the face. Deputies learned the woman’s husband was out of the country, and her adult son, later identified as Martinez, was living with them at that home. Gandhi said deputies at that time did not know where the son was.
Shortly after 3:20 p.m., Gandhi announced that the woman died “possibly by blunt force trauma” and that the suspect was “possibly barricaded inside” a home. SWAT deputies arrived, surrounded the home and worked to get the suspect to surrender.
For the next few hours, sheriff’s officials tried to communicate with anyone who might be in the home. But they never received any response. The Sheriff’s Office had deputies surround the home, approached with an armored vehicle, used aerial drones and tossed a phone inside the home to establish communication, but Martinez never responded.
“We weren’t 100% sure he was in there,” Gandhi said. “We were just going off information we were getting from neighbors. But there was zero movement. There was nothing going on at all (inside the home).”
About 8 p.m., the sheriff’s SWAT team entered the home and found Martinez. He was taken into custody and questioned by detectives before he was formally arrested on suspicion of homicide early Thursday.
Martinez was booked at the Sacramento County Main Jail, where he was being held without bail. His arraignment is scheduled to take place Friday afternoon in Sacramento Superior Court.
This story was originally published August 28, 2024 at 4:01 PM.