Damien Joseph Bullard, a 26-year-old man from Bakersfield, California, spent his final evening at a small marijuana dispensary in east Bakersfield, unaware that a brief argument would escalate into the gunfire that took his life on May 27, 2025. He was later remembered in obituary notices and online memorials simply as a young man whose life ended suddenly that Tuesday, leaving a circle of family and friends to mourn him.
That night, around 9:40 p.m., Kern County Sheriff’s deputies were dispatched to the 1600 block of Flower Street near Williams Street after reports of shots being fired inside the business. When deputies entered the marijuana dispensary, they found two victims suffering from gunshot wounds: Damien and 37-year-old Anthony Victor Ochoa. Both men were pronounced dead at the scene, and the coroner’s office later formally identified them as the victims in what quickly became known as the Flower Street double homicide.
In the early hours of the investigation, detectives pieced together a grim sequence of events from witness accounts and surveillance footage. According to sheriff’s officials, four males entered the dispensary shortly before the shooting, followed by Damien and Ochoa. Inside the small shop, a verbal argument broke out, its details still not fully described in public records but serious enough that it ended in multiple shots being fired. As the victims fell, the four suspects ran from the dispensary and fled the area in a gold four-door sedan driven by a waiting female, leaving behind a crime scene of shell casings, shattered normalcy, and two lives cut short.
The killings drew an intensive response from law enforcement. Homicide detectives from the Kern County Sheriff’s Office worked alongside the agency’s Gang Suppression Unit, the Bakersfield Police Department gang unit, Kern County Probation, and state parole officers to identify those responsible. Through this coordinated effort, investigators announced they had identified five suspects connected to the shooting: 18-year-old Terrance Thompson, 20-year-old Darwin Young Jr., 20-year-old Nancy Ruiz, and two juvenile males. Authorities described Thompson and the two juvenile boys as documented members of the East Side Crips, and the investigation framed the violence as gang-related and tied to a robbery at the dispensary.
Within days, arrests followed. Young, Ruiz, and the two juvenile suspects were located in Kern County and taken into custody, while Thompson was tracked to a relative’s home in Las Vegas, Nevada, where he was arrested with the assistance of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and held pending extradition to Kern County. According to sheriff’s and court reports, Young, Thompson, and the two juveniles were booked on two counts of murder, second-degree robbery, and participating in a criminal street gang. Ruiz was arrested on charges of second-degree robbery in connection with the same incident. Later reporting identified one of the juveniles as 17-year-old Ramahs Turner, who also faces two counts of murder and a robbery charge arising from the Flower Street killings. Prosecutors have said the crime was committed for the benefit of the Eastside Crips street gang, underscoring the gang dimension behind the dispensary confrontation.
As the case moved into the courts, further details emerged about the background of at least one suspect. Court records cited in local news coverage indicate that Young had previously been sent to prison in 2024 on gun and gang-related convictions and had been released on May 21, 2025—just six days before the Flower Street shooting in which he is now accused of participating. Young and Ruiz have entered not-guilty pleas to the charges against them, while Turner’s case began in juvenile court as prosecutors sought to have him tried as an adult. At the time of the most recent reports, the defendants remained in various stages of pretrial proceedings, with no convictions reported and all charges still legally considered allegations.
Outside the court filings and police statements, Damien’s story continues in quieter, more personal ways. On online memorial pages dedicated to victims of gun violence, friends and family describe him as hardworking, loyal, funny, and smart, a young man whose presence is deeply missed. Loved ones write that his child still talks about him every day, and relatives express grief that feels as raw as the night he was taken. Those tributes sketch the outline of a life that was more than a crime statistic: a son, a father, a friend whose absence still echoes in Bakersfield while the justice system slowly works through the case of the dispensary shooting that ended his life.
