(NewsNation) — A Fresno County woman and her boyfriend have each been charged with murder and a special circumstance of multiple murders in the killing of a teen mom and her infant child, the Fresno County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement Tuesday.
According to local police, Yanelly Solorio Rivera, 18, and her 3-week-old baby, Celine, were asleep when they were shot with a 9mm handgun multiple times by Yanelly’s sister, Yarelly Solorio-Rivera, 22, on Sept. 24.
Fresno Police Chief Paco Balderrama said that when officers arrived, they found Yanelly Solorio-Rivera shot to death in her bed with her baby Celine in her arms.
“The murder scene was traumatic for all officers, detectives, EMS personnel, and crime scene technicians who responded to the scene,” he said.
Prosecutors claim Yarelly Solorio-Rivera and her boyfriend, Martin Arroyo-Morales, 26, allegedly agreed to kill her sister, aligning with Fresno Police reports of a motive rooted in jealousy and sibling rivalry.
As a result, Yarelly Solorio-Rivera was also charged with two enhancements of “personal and intentional discharge of a firearm causing death.”
Fresno police arrested the couple last week after the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives conducted a thorough search of the orchard surrounding the home, and an announcement of a $25,000 reward for information leading to a conviction produced concrete leads.
While Balderrama would not go into detail about the nature of the jealousy or Yarelly Solorio-Riverain’s conection to the murder, he did say detectives recovered surveillance video of a man leaving the home in a rural part of Fresno. The man in the video was later identified as Arroyo-Morales, a “verified gang member,” Balderrama said.
Additionally, Balderrama said in a press conference Thursday that the couple showed no remorse while confessing to the slaying.
“We know we have the right people. We have confessions, we have the murder weapon, no doubts as to what happened,” he said.
The couple is currently being held at the Fresno County Jail on a $2 million bond and they are scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday.
According to shouselaw.com, a defendant may be convicted of special circumstances murder if they have been found guilty of other first — or second —degree murders at the same trial.
If convicted of all charges, they face life without the possibility of parole, or the death penalty.
It wasn’t immediately known if Yarelly Solorio-Rivera and Arroyo-Morales have retained attorneys who could speak on their behalf.
