PRESS-ENTERPRISE: "Corona Movie Theater Shooting Suspect Says ‘Voices’ Led Him to Kill"

From Brian Rokos' 8-4-21 PRESS-ENTERPRISE article entitled "Corona Movie Theater Shooting Suspect Says ‘Voices’ Led Him to Kill":

Joseph Jimenez, the man accused of fatally shooting two young people in a Corona movie theater, said he killed them because the voices in his head that have tormented him for months told him to.

“The voices said my friends and family were going to be killed,” Jimenez said in a jailhouse interview on Wednesday, Aug. 4, at the Larry D. Smith Correctional Facility in Banning. That led to the shooting, he said.

When asked to clarify whether he believed the only way to save his loved ones was to shoot Rylee Goodrich, 18, and Anthony Barajas, 19, Jimenez answered matter-of-factly: “Basically, yeah.”

Jimenez, 20, is scheduled to be arraigned Thursday in Superior Court in Riverside on two counts of murder with two special-circumstance allegations — lying in wait and multiple murders — that make him eligible for the death penalty should the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office pursue that punishment.

Jimenez said he is “a little” nervous about the case.

Jimenez said he has been haunted by the voices for about eight months. They sometimes threaten to steal his car and television, he said. Jimenez said he was diagnosed with schizophrenia about eight months ago and was taking medication. But recently, he said, he had not taken his pills.

“I ran out and didn’t get it refilled,” Jimenez said.

Jimenez said the voices were overwhelming on the night of the shooting, July 26, and prevented him from concentrating on the movie “The Forever Purge,” the fifth in an anthology in which the plot centers around the suspension of all laws for a 12-hour period each year. Jimenez said the movie’s theme did not influence what he said happened next in theater No. 15 at the Regal Edwards cinema at the Crossings at Corona shopping center.

Jimenez said he left the theater, went to his car and retrieved a gun he said he had purchased on OfferUp, an online selling platform.

To read the entire article, click HERE.