The Sinaloa cartel hired two 15-year-old boys from a Los Angeles street gang to carry out a hit on a rival early last year in Chula Vista, setting off a chaotic string of events outside a restaurant and at an upscale apartment that left one person dead and two others wounded by gunfire, according to guilty pleas that the two boys entered Thursday in San Diego federal court.
The guilty pleas helped shed light on an episode of cartel-linked violence that had largely been shrouded in secrecy for nearly two years.
According to their pleas, Johncarlo Quintero, now 17, and Andrew Nunez, 16, were members of a street gang affiliated with the Mexican Mafia from the Wilmington neighborhood of Los Angeles and were hired by the Sinaloa cartel to kill a man who was not identified by name in court documents.
The Union-Tribune previously reported that the target was James Bryant Corona, also known as “El Apache,” who was the alleged leader of a Tijuana drug cell with dual U.S.-Mexican citizenship, according to sources on both sides of the border with knowledge of the investigation. The sources spoke to the Union-Tribune on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation at the time.
According to their guilty pleas, Quintero and Nunez first targeted the victim on March 26, 2024, outside a Chili’s restaurant in a strip mall parking lot off East H Street and Paseo del Rey. Quintero admitted in court Thursday that he jumped out of a car as the target was leaving the restaurant with his family and shot the victim once, striking him in one of his legs.
But Quintero’s gun jammed after just one shot, so Nunez tried unsuccessfully to run over the victim with the vehicle he was driving, according to both of their pleas. The wounded victim was able to retreat to safety back inside the restaurant.
Early the next morning, about five hours after the first attack, the boys traveled with another man, identified in court Thursday as Ricardo Sanchez, to the victim’s residence at the Salerno Luxury Rentals apartment complex in Chula Vista’s Otay Ranch neighborhood, according to their plea agreements. They admitted that they went to the apartment, where the four people inside included a minor, to “complete the killing” and were expecting to be paid $50,000 each for carrying out the hit.
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 on the friend, who was struck by gunshots in one hand, an 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. Nunez and Quintero fled but were apprehended by police later that day.
Nunez and Quintero were initially charged in San Diego Superior Court, but their cases were later transferred to U.S. District Court. Because they were juveniles, those cases remained sealed until Thursday when they pleaded guilty and a judge granted a prosecutor’s request to unseal the cases.
In their guilty pleas, the two boys admitted that they were recruited to carry out the hit specifically because they were not yet 16 years old, and thus under a 2018 state law were ineligible to be tried as adults.
In a statement, U.S. Attorney Adam Gordon said that the law “created perverse incentives” for violent organizations.
“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,” Gordon said in his statement. “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.”
The two boys each pleaded guilty to one count of murder in aid of racketeering for the death of their companion, Sanchez, and two counts of attempted murder in aid of racketeering. The murder charge carries a maximum sentence of life in prison or death, though Quintero’s attorney noted in court that the plea agreement contains a stipulation that her client won’t face those punishments because he was a juvenile at the time.