Samuel Pasillas, bottom right, and Juan Manuel Cebreros, top right, were arrested in a murder-for-hire plot in California that left a man injured. (Shot up car screenshot from KABC/YouTube; Mug shots from Riverside Police Department)
A California pastor is accused of paying nearly $40,000 to hit men to kill his daughter’s boyfriend, who survived being shot and lived to tell police about the tale from the hospital.
Samuel Pasillas, 47, and Juan Manuel Cebreros, 55, were arrested on March 13 during raids by Riverside police at three homes in two counties in Southern California.
The case came to light on Oct. 21 when Riverside police responded to a hospital for a report of a man who had been shot, authorities said in a news release. The shooting happened that night around 7 p.m. in Riverside, a suburb about 50 miles east of downtown Los Angeles.
The man told police he was driving on Grove Community Drive approaching Plainview Street when another vehicle pulled alongside him, and someone inside fired at him. He was hit several times and drove himself to the hospital in his bullet-riddled car.
Detectives quickly learned the shooting was a murder for hire, and the victim had been dating a woman whose father is a pastor for a Spanish-speaking church in the city of Victorville, in the high desert northeast of LA.
Authorities said that on the night of the shooting, the pastor met with the men he hired, gave them information about the victim and his location and had paid them nearly $40,000 to tail the victim in the weeks leading up to the shooting.
A third man was being sought, local ABC affiliate KABC reported. Details about other suspects were not revealed as the investigation is ongoing, police said.
Pasillas and Cebreros were booked on $1 million bail into the Robert Presley Detention Center for solicitation for murder, conspiracy to commit murder, attempted murder, and assault with a deadly weapon. They pleaded not guilty during their arraignments on Friday. A felony settlement conference is set for Tuesday in Riverside, online court records show.
Pasillas’ public defender did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Law&Crime.
The Los Angeles Times reported it could not reach anyone from Pasillas’ church, Centro Internacional de Oracion.
