Police officials have discovered the bodies of six people at a remote dirt crossroads in the Mojave Desert.
On Tuesday night (January 23), San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department deputies responded to a request for a wellness check around the remote area off Highway 395 - which is outside the community of El Mirage - at around 8.15PM, as reported by The Guardian.
Upon arriving at the scene, five bodies were located and the sixth body was found by investigators during an overnight search, sheriff's spokesperson Mara Rodriguez disclosed, according to USA Today.
Local TV stations had to blur some of the graphic images and overhead footage captured by their helicopters of the grisly scene.
The spot where the victims were discovered is about 50 miles (80 kilometers) northeast of Los Angeles and about 20 miles (32 kilometers) northwest of Victorville.
As the area is so isolated and remote, the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department called in help from the California Highway Patrol’s Aviation Division to find the scene.
Members of the sheriff's specialized investigations division were also instructed to conduct a homicide investigation, per an email from sheriff's spokesperson Gloria Huerta.
"It’ll be several hours still before we are ready for anybody to be removed from the scene," Rodriguez said, revealing that the coroner's investigators will be called in then.
Per KTLA, Two cars - a blue SUV and a white van - were left at the scene. The outlet revealed that the SUV was punctured with bullet holes and seemed to have some of its windows blown out, adding that one of the bodies was found in one of the vehicles.
The Mojave Desert, named after the Mojave people, is a region of Southern California as well as parts of Nevada, Utah, and Arizona that occupies more than 25,000 square miles.
San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department spokesperson Mara Rodriguez shared that detectives are still assembling evidence that might unlock what happened and the circumstances behind the killings. Neither the gender nor ages of the deceased have been disclosed.
Questioned on whether bodies had been found in the desert before, Gloria Huerta responded: "I know that we’ve had cases before just because we have a large desert area. To this magnitude, I can’t remember," as cited The New York Times.
"I’ve been with the department for 25 years, and I haven’t seen that," she continued. "But it is a pretty large, desolate desert area. There’s no buildings, that I saw. No businesses or anything like that. So, that’s the best I could describe it. It’s just an open area."
As of late Wednesday (January 24) afternoon, the bodies had not yet been moved from the scene. "We’re doing the best we can to get through the evidence collected and get it processed, and, you know, hopefully, come to a conclusion on this case," Huerta shared.
Police officials have said no arrests had been made, as of the time of writing.
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