Two more Stockton mass shooting victims walked in to hospital, said authorities

Darrell Smith, The Sacramento Bee on Dec 2, 2025

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Two men grazed by bullets during a birthday party shooting in Stockton that killed four people, including three children, later walked into a nearby hospital for treatment, authorities said. The total number of victims has now risen to 17.

As the days pass and the manhunt continues for the shooters responsible for Saturday’s massacre, investigators are pleading with witnesses to come forward.

“Please talk to investigators,” San Joaquin County Sheriff’s spokeswoman Heather Brent said Tuesday. “There were 100 to 150 people at the party. The information that we’re getting is not enough. We need more information.”

Brent confirmed both men had attended the party. Their wounds were minor, she said, but investigators are frustrated they did not come forward immediately after the mass shooting.

“It’s concerning. Why did they not talk to authorities the same night?,” Brent said, before issuing the plea for more people who attended the banquet hall birthday party Saturday to come forward.

Three children, ages 8, 9 and 14, were killed inside the crowded hall where more than 100 people were celebrating a 2-year-old’s birthday party.

Two of the children have been identified: Maya Lupian, 8, an elementary school student in the Stockton Unified School District, and 14-year-old Amari Peterson of Modesto.

Maya was two weeks from her 9th birthday when she was killed.

“She deserved a childhood full of laughter, school days, karate, family time, and dreams ... not this,” older sister Yesenia Lupian wrote online. “We are devastated, heartbroken and trying to navigate the impossible.”

“He was my little golden child,” Amari’s father, a tearful Patrick Peterson, told The Sacramento Bee Monday in a telephone interview from the family’s Modesto home. Already a talented athlete at 14, Amari enjoyed and excelled at football, basketball and track and field. He was well-liked by friends and classmates, beloved at home.

“My son was really loved. He was a popular kid. There were so many kids who admired him, who wanted to be like him,” the elder Peterson said.

“He listened to me and his mom. His job was to be a good boy, get good grades. He had this wonderful smile that would light the sky,” Peterson said before his emotions overtook him. “He was the perfect kid.”

Carl Bryant, president of Central Valley Roadrunners, the Modesto youth track-and-field club, coached Amari and has known the Peterson family for more than 40 years.

“I have been coaching kids for 45 years. This is one of the most difficult things I’ve had to deal with,” Bryant told The Bee on Monday. “Amari was just a good kid. Wherever he went, he touched people’s lives. He had that personality people gravitated to. He was that shining light.”

A 21-year-old man, identified by family as Susano Archuleta, was also killed in the shooting.

Archuleta was shot in the neck and died at the scene, his brother Emmanuel Lopez told the Los Angeles Times. Lopez said his 9-year-old daughter was also wounded — shot in the head — but survived.

The shooter or shooters remain at large. A $50,000 reward has been offered for information leading to their arrest.

People can submit photos and video captures related to the attack to fbi.gov/stocktonshooting.

Tips can be also be called in to the San Joaquin Sheriff’s Office at 209-946-0600.

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