Rodriguez later heard rumors that unspecified activities at the house were advertised on the online classified listings website Craigslist. She said she was afraid to call police because she also heard that the operation next door was run by “the cartel.” The house is across the street from Sunnymead Elementary, less than half a mile from Sunnymead Middle School and less than a mile south of Sunnymead Boulevard, which is notorious for its prostitutes.
There was something about the green house with white bars on the windows that wasn’t quite right, its neighbors on Dracea Avenue in Moreno Valley agreed.
Maybe it was the frequent coming and goings of a wide cast of people.
“I thought it was family. I thought it was a big family,” Ronnie Mirianda said Monday, Nov. 18.
Maybe it was that Nicole Rodriguez, who has lived in the same house for more than 20 years and knows what kind of cars her neighbors drive, said that she never got to know these new neighbors.
“It was always random people going to the door,” Rodriguez said.
Margarito Valdez Gomez
So it was not a shock when on Nov. 13, Riverside County sheriff’s deputies showed up about noon at in the 24100 block of Dracea and arrested Margarito Valdez Gomez, 46, on suspicion of running a brothel.
Deputies had run a sting operation that led to the arrest of Gomez and three others. Gomez, of Los Angeles, posted $25,000 bail Nov. 14 and is out of custody.
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