2 Convicted of Murder in Feud Slaying : Shooting of Farm Worker Capped Earlier Family Battle in Mexico

An Orange County Superior Court jury found two men guilty of first-degree murder Tuesday for killing a farm worker in what the prosecutor said was a bloody feud spanning nearly three years and thousands of miles.

The jury convicted Odon Borja, 30, of Cypress and Juan Cruz Torres, 22, of Hawaiian Gardens on one count each of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder and the use of a firearm in the death of Gumaro Pineda, 33, a farm worker from the Mexican state of Guerrero.

Pineda was shot--in full view of more than 130 other farm laborers--while picking strawberries in a Cypress field early last April 17.

The night before the shooting, Borja and Torres had been drinking together, said Orange County Deputy Dist. Atty. Edward R. Munoz, when Torres began urging Borja to avenge the death of his father, who had been shot in Guerrero during the bloody, weeklong beginning of a feud between two families.

Munoz said the vendetta was traceable to a December, 1983, harvest festival in Javali, a ranch where the families lived outside Acapulco. During the festival, Munoz said, three of Borja’s brothers got into an argument with three of Pineda’s brothers.

After the festival, as the Pineda men were walking home with their wives, Munoz said, the Borja brothers ambushed the couples, killing the men as their wives looked on.

According to Munoz, whose information came from Mexican law enforcement officials in Guerrero, a Pineda family friend witnessed the killings and later murdered the Borja family patriarch.

When the Borja brothers who started it all found out, they killed the Pineda family friend in retaliation, Munoz said. All five murders, Munoz said, occurred in the same week.

“It’s pretty amazing,” Munoz said, “but they have their own code of doing things.”

Nearly three years after the week of killings, Munoz said, Odon Borja and Torres purchased two pistols--a .38-caliber semiautomatic and a .22-caliber with a long barrel--and more than 95 rounds of ammunition, then set out for the Cypress strawberry field, Munoz said.

Torres, who knew where Pineda was working, led Borja to a field at the southwest corner of Valley View Street and Katella Avenue and pointed him out in a crowd of workers, Munoz said.

Borja stepped behind the crouching Pineda and called his name. As he stood upright, Borja fired five rounds, striking the man four times in the head, chest and back, Munoz said. Torres sprayed bullets in the air to keep the other workers at bay, Munoz said, and the two gunmen fled.

After a short automobile chase, they were arrested by Cypress police about five miles from the murder scene.