Total homicides down for 2016 in Stanislaus County

Thursday night’s homicide was the ninth in Stanislaus County in less than two months.

While the last few months have been particularly violent, including the killing of Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Deputy Dennis Wallace in November, the total number of homicides in 2016 was down 22 percent from last year.

There were 36 homicides in 2016 – 15 in Modesto, seven in Turlock, one in Ceres and 13 in the Sheriff Department’s jurisdiction. There were 46 within the county in 2015.

There were a record high number of homicides in Modesto in 2015 – 28 homicides compared to the city’s previous record of 24 in 2012. There were several incidents involving multiple victims, like the killing of eight people, three of them young children, in two domestic violence cases.

[Click here to see the 2016 Stanislaus County Homicide Map]

In 2016 one child was killed. Brisa Covarrubias, 13, was shot to death in front of her west Modesto home on May 30. Her 15-year-old brother was also shot but survived.

Unlike in 2015, there were no multiple-victim incidents in 2016, but others were injured in a single incident like in the May 30 shooting.

Another incident with multiple victims involved a fight at the Shadow Lounge Bar in northeast Modesto in which the fatal stabbing victim’s cousins also were assaulted.

The majority of 2016’s homicides happened at the end of the year and at the beginning, with five in January.

While the majority of the homicides in 2015 and 2016 were within the city of Modesto, both Modesto police and the Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Department usually have close to the same number, and the Sheriff’s Department led the county the previous two years.

The Sheriff’s Department had 16 in both 2013 and 2014, while Modesto police had just below that with 15 and 12, respectively.

There were no homicides in Oakdale last year, and the one homicide in Ceres, and the first homicide of the year for the county, was an officer-involved shooting by two Ceres officers on Jan. 5.

Three other officer-involved shootings followed, all by Modesto police officers, although one took place in Turlock where two Modesto police officers were assisting the Stanislaus County Drug Enforcement Agency on a drug sting. In that incident, officers shot and killed a man who drove his car into a patrol car.

That was one of seven homicides in Turlock in 2016, a higher-than-normal number for the city that usually has just one or two for the year and sometimes none.

The last homicide of 2016, the stabbing of a man at the Budget Inn Motel on South Ninth Street, was the second at the motel this year. In February a 58-year-old woman was beaten to death with a toilet tank lid.

This story was originally published December 31, 2016 at 5:53 PM with the headline "Total homicides down for 2016 in Stanislaus County."