Three months, no arrests. Deadly Stockton birthday party mass shooting unsolved
Three months after gunfire erupted at a toddler’s birthday party in Stockton, killing four people and wounding 13 in one of the region’s deadliest mass shootings in years, no suspects are in custody and no criminal case has been filed, authorities said Friday.
The Nov. 29 mass shooting at the Monkey Space venue on Lucile Avenue shook even Stockton residents hardened by years of persistent violence and crime in the city 50 miles south of Sacramento, leaving blood and broken toys inside and outside a party room where moments before guests were celebrating the birthday of a 2-year-old.
Among the dead were Maya Lupian, 8, a third-grader at Stockton’s Aspire Apex Academy; Journey Rose Reotutar Guerrero, 8, a third-grader at Commodore Stockton Skills School; Amari Peterson, 14, of Modesto; and Susano Archuleta, 21, of Stockton.
More than 50 rounds were fired from five different weapons at the party, and attendees included multiple known gang members, San Joaquin County Sheriff Patrick Withrow said at the time. But he said that investigators had not determined whether gang ties or rivalries motivated the violence or were a factor in the bloody events that played out on that late fall Saturday.
On Friday, a spokesperson for Withrow said there were no updates in the case. The San Joaquin County District Attorney’s Office, which would be the agency prosecuting any suspects, said it did not yet have a case, and referred a Bee reporter to the Sheriff’s Office, which is working with multiple law enforcement partners including Stockton police and the state Department of Justice.
Three months in, the only break in the case to be released publicly was the seizure of two vehicles earlier this month that Withrow’s office said were involved in the shooting.
“We have identified and recovered both vehicles of interest used in the Stockton Mass Shooting on 11/29/25,” the department said in a Feb. 4 post on Facebook.
The two vehicles, a silver Volkswagen sedan and a white Honda sedan, were being processed for DNA and other evidence, the post said. Authorities have not said to whom the vehicles were registered.
The seizure of the vehicles came after a plea for help from the Sheriff’s Office, posted Jan. 17 on its Facebook page.
“Public assistance needed,” it read. “Anyone with information on the vehicles depicted or the suspects involved are encouraged to come forward.”
But in the three weeks since the cars were seized, no suspects have been named or arrested.
On the Facebook post, commenters hinted that the reason may be fear of reprisals from area gangs.
“They must have leads if they know these 2 vehicles are related to the shooting,” one commenter said.
Said another: “Snitching could get someone hurt.”
Two men in attendance that night who were arrested — Luciano Guerrero, 22, and Billy Lee Williams Jr., 31 — each remain in custody.
Guerrero was being held without bail Friday in the San Joaquin County Jail on charges stemming a parole violation in connection with a 2024 conviction for numerous crimes connected to gang activity.
Williams was in the custody of the North Kern State Prison in Delano after he admitted in December that he had violated parole by attending the party. A past order barred him from being near children’s activities and associating with gangs, according to the Stockton Record.
Neither man was considered suspect in the shooting itself, authorities have said.
The brutal attack brought into sharp relief Stockton’s ongoing struggles with violent crime.
There were 64 homicides in Stockton, a city of 300,000 people, in 2024, the same deadly count as in 2015 a decade earlier, state data show. The number of rapes increased by 50%.
And while the total number of crimes with committed with a firearm was down about 8% over the decade, the rate has been going up dramatically since 2021. That year, 294 crimes were committed with firearms in Stockton. But in 2024, that number jumped to 457, state data show.
The Bee’s Graham Womack contributed to this story.
