Emmanuel Lopez thought he had escaped the worst night of his life when masked gunmen opened fire at a child’s birthday party in Stockton on November 29.
One month later, the thirty-three-year-old man was dead, gunned down at an apartment complex in his hometown on December 28 in what police are calling a possibly gang-related shooting.
Lopez watched his best friend, Susano Archuleta, die in his arms after the twenty-one-year-old was shot in the neck while trying to protect other partygoers from the barrage of gunfire that investigators say came from at least five different weapons.
“My brother died in my arms,” Lopez told the Los Angeles Times in the aftermath of the attack that left his daughter fighting for her life with a gunshot wound to her head.
Lopez was among more than one hundred guests at the birthday celebration for the two-year-old daughter of Stockton rapper NanoMB, when chaos erupted at the Monkey Space event center.
NanoMB, remains in custody on parole violations after a judge ruled in December that his gang affiliations and criminal history outweighed claims that he was a victim of the shooting.
The twenty-two-year-old rapper is connected to both the Asian Boyz and Muddy Boyz gangs, according to prosecutors, who argued that he knowingly allowed gang members like MBNel to attend his daughter’s birthday party despite being on parole.
San Joaquin County Sheriff Patrick Withrow revealed that over fifty shots were fired during the targeted attack, which killed three children along with Archuleta and sent shockwaves through the Stockton community.
The mass shooting investigation remains unsolved with no arrests made, according to the most recent update from sheriff’s officials on January 1, 2026.
MBNel’s dad previously said that gunmen were targeting his son, who had gone into hiding in December.
“My deepest condolences to the families who had to bury their children, and to the innocent lives lost,” MBNel wrote on social media. “What happened in Stockton has left families carrying an unimaginable loss.”
“At this time, there is nothing to indicate that the two shootings are related,” sheriff’s spokesperson Brent told Stocktonia, while declining to confirm Lopez’s attendance at the birthday party.
Stockton has experienced at least ten additional shootings since the Thanksgiving weekend massacre, including a fatal incident at a convenience store that killed seventeen-year-old Noah Juan Auburn just days before Lopez’s death.
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