- Monday, March 10, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
The man in his late 40s who has been arrested on charges of kidnapping and murdering four members of an Indian-origin family in California, the US, has a shady past.
According to one report, Jesus Manuel Saldago, 48, had committed a similar crime 17 years ago, and its victims have spoken about it to a local news network.
CBS47 has reported that local officials shared Saldago’s record that included a robbery in 2005 and he served eight years of imprisonment for that. The victims in that case owned a trucking business in Merced town, as did the ill-fated members of the Sikh family who had migrated to the US from the northern Indian state of Punjab.
“I was shutting the front door of my home when he pulled out a gun and held it to the back of my head,” one of the victims of the 2005 robbery case, told the network on the condition of anonymity.
Salgado had tied the hands of this man, his wife, their 16-year-old daughter and her friend with duct tapes before he “stole all the money we had, rings, that kind of stuff”, the CBS47 report added.
It was also said that Saldago was possibly upset as the man was his employer and had fired him from a job he had done for two years.
The man also alleged that Saldago had threatened to kill them if they informed the police about it. But they alerted the cops and Saldago was arrested the very next morning.
Saldago got a 11-year sentence of which he served eight in jail and three on probation, that is, released with the promise of good conduct.
On Wednesday (5), local authorities in Merced County released a security camera video showing Saldago abducting the four members of the Indian-origin family, including an eight-month-old baby girl, at gunpoint from their business on Monday (3).
They were not seen alive again and their bodies were found in an orchard on Wednesday evening.
Saldago was arrested on Tuesday (4) and is in hospital after he tried to commit suicide. His family reported that he allegedly confessed to his crime.
“There’s a special place in hell for this guy,” said Merced County Sheriff Vern Warnke.
The city of Merced, which is around 200 kilometres from San Francisco, is home to less than 90,000 people.
