Two 21-year-old men from Santa Cruz County died from gunshot wounds early Friday morning on the 700 block of Carlton Road just outside Watsonville.
The Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office said the men’s names are being withheld until family members can be notified.
In a release, the department said that deputies responded to a report of a shooting just before 1 a.m. Friday and found two men with gunshot wounds.
“Despite life-saving efforts, both victims were pronounced dead at the scene,” according to the sheriff’s office.
“We received multiple 911 calls, the first being at 12:43 a.m.,” Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Ashley Keehn said. “Deputies were dispatched at 12:44 a.m. and arrived on scene at 12:51 a.m.”
Carlton Road remained closed through an expected reopening late Friday afternoon. The incident happened in an area surrounded by farms and with few homes.
Keehn said police are conducting interviews Friday to determine a possible motive in the shooting, and a forensic pathologist will conduct an autopsy to determine the exact cause of death. She said that several people were at the scene when police arrived.
A food truck operator in the area on Friday afternoon said that it’s a peaceful neighborhood and he’d never seen anything like this happen there before. He said that area farm workers didn’t seem to know what happened, either, and had been asking him all day if he had information.
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