Hispanic/Latino male Aaron “Rooster” Lucio, age 26, was shot on the night of October 24, 2020, in Watsonville, California. Around 9:30 p.m., officers were called to the intersection of Main Street and Pennsylvania Drive, where the 26-year-old man was found and taken to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead. That evening had already been violent: roughly four hours earlier, another man, Rafael “Viejo” Salcedo, had been fatally shot elsewhere in the city, and before midnight a third, separate shooting left another victim critically wounded. Authorities initially said they were investigating whether the incidents were connected; the shootings occurred within hours of each other but at different locations.
In the days that followed, the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office publicly identified the victims—confirming Aaron “Rooster” Lucio, age 26, as the man killed near Pennsylvania Drive and Main Street—and released limited details as detectives worked the case. Memorial pages later recorded his name and the date and place of his killing, marking him among those lost to gun violence on October 24, 2020, in Watsonville.
Nearly a year later, a break came. In early September 2021, Watsonville police announced they had arrested 22-year-old Julio Sanchez in connection with the October 24 shooting. Investigators said Sanchez—already in county jail on an unrelated case—confessed to killing the 26-year-old man at Main Street and Pennsylvania Drive; he was arraigned and charged with murder and held without bail. A multi-agency task force, the Santa Cruz County Anti-Crime Team, assisted with the investigation. Police also clarified that although there were multiple shootings in Watsonville that same night, the Pennsylvania Drive homicide was ultimately not linked to the other incidents.
As the case moved forward, local coverage framed the killing of Aaron “Rooster” Lucio, age 26, as part of a late-October spate of shootings that unsettled the community. City leaders and law enforcement later addressed the broader surge in violence, even as the specific investigation into Lucio’s death centered on the confessed shooter who, according to police, had admitted to the crime.
