Bryan Barrios Marroquin

Bryan Barrios-Marroquin was a 25-year-old Hispanic man whose death left his family with what his father, Reno Barrios-Morales, later described as a "pain that has no cure." In a letter submitted to the court, his father wrote, "I go to sleep crying and I wake up crying."

On June 3, 2023, Barrios-Marroquin was shot and killed in Richmond, California. His body was then moved into a pickup truck, which was driven to the Oakland hills and set on fire. The burning vehicle was discovered later that day parked in the 9500 block of Mountain Boulevard, near the Oakland Zoo. Authorities initially investigated the scene as a suspicious death.

An autopsy soon revealed that Barrios-Marroquin had died from a gunshot wound, shifting the focus of the investigation. A tip led police to connect the fire in Oakland to the homicide in Richmond, and they identified 42-year-old Jose Vazquez-Cano as a suspect. Investigators determined that Vazquez-Cano and Barrios-Marroquin knew each other and that Barrios-Marroquin was the intended target of the shooting.

Vazquez-Cano, a convicted felon, was arrested and charged with murder with a firearm enhancement, mutilation of a corpse, and possession of a firearm by a felon. During his trial, Vazquez-Cano offered conflicting defenses, testifying that he had acted in self-defense but also that "the gun accidentally went off 11 times." A jury ultimately convicted him of second-degree murder and arson of a corpse.

At his sentencing hearing in October 2026, the judge noted that burning the body had made it much harder for a forensic pathologist to trace the trajectory of the victim's numerous gunshot wounds. Citing the 11 shots that were fired, the judge declined to strike a 25-year firearm enhancement from the sentence. Jose Vazquez-Cano was sentenced to 42 years to life in state prison.