The summer of 2005 had just begun in Yuma, Arizona, when it was cut short for 13-year-old Andreas Crawford. A young boy, Andreas was staying with the family of Adrienne Heredia at their home on East La Mesa Street. His life, full of the promise of teenage years, ended in an act of unimaginable violence on Friday, June 24, 2005, making him one of the youngest victims in one of the city's most horrific crimes.
That evening, police responded to reports of screams and gunshots at the
residence. In the backyard, they found 35-year-old Luis Rios, Adrienne's boyfriend, with multiple gunshot wounds. He was rushed to a nearby hospital but died shortly after. Fearing a hostage situation, officers cautiously entered the dark home. Inside, they made a devastating discovery. The house was not a standoff scene but a slaughterhouse, containing the bodies of five more victims, including four children.
Among them was Andreas Crawford. He and 12-year-old Enrique Bedoya, another boy staying at the home, were found on the floor, having been bound and killed by asphyxiation. Elsewhere in the house were the bodies of 29-year-old Adrienne Heredia and her 9-year-old daughter, Inez Newman, who had also been asphyxiated. Adrienne's 6-year-old son, Danny Heredia III, had been shot to death. The sheer brutality of the crime, which came to be known as the "La Mesa Street Murders," shocked the community and left a family shattered.
For more than two years, the case remained unsolved, leaving the community on edge and the victims' families without answers. Investigators pursued thousands of tips and conducted over 1,300 interviews, but the trail seemed cold. The break came on November 28, 2007, when police publicly named Preston Alton Strong as a suspect. By then, Strong, a man with a history of fraud and theft convictions, was already in custody on unrelated charges. The motive, prosecutors would later argue, was financial. Strong, a one-time friend of Luis Rios, had allegedly committed the murders after Rios, who had frequently loaned him money, refused to give him any more.
The investigation revealed that Strong was a serial killer responsible for at least one other murder. While awaiting trial for the La Mesa massacre, he was prosecuted for the November 2007 killing of Dr. Satinder Gill, a 62-year-old physician. Dr. Gill was found in his home, the victim of blunt force trauma and suffocation, in a staged scene designed to look like an accident. Strong was convicted of that murder in 2012 and sentenced to life in prison.
It wasn't until 2014, nine years after Andreas and the others were killed, that Strong was formally indicted for the six La Mesa Street murders. His trial brought the horrific details of that June night back into the public eye. Evidence presented included Strong's fingerprints found at the scene and his DNA on the steering wheel of Rios's abandoned car. In April 2017, a jury found Preston Alton Strong guilty on all six counts of first-degree murder.
For the murders of Andreas Crawford, Enrique Bedoya, Inez Newman, Danny Heredia III, Adrienne Heredia, and Luis Rios, Strong was sentenced to death. He was also convicted of numerous other charges, including aggravated assault, armed robbery, and kidnapping. Despite multiple appeals in which he claimed innocence and alleged police misconduct, his convictions and death sentence have been upheld, most recently by the Arizona Supreme Court in September 2024. Preston Strong remains on death row, having brought a violent end to the lives of seven people, including a 13-year-old boy spending a summer night with friends.
