The killings of two young people have left Native Americans living in a remote part of Northern California shocked and shattered. 

A 15-year-old girl was arrested Saturday on suspicion of killing 16-year-old Ruby Sky Montelongo in Covelo, a small town in northeast Mendocino County with close ties to the Round Valley Indian Tribes and Reservation, officials said.

In the same town, less than three weeks before this tragedy, Nicholas Shehli Whipple, 20, was shot and killed March 29. The Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office is looking for Lee Anthony Joaquin in connection with the shooting; Joaquin “is considered armed and dangerous,” the sheriff said.

In response to the violence, the Round Valley Indian Tribes’ Tribal Council declared a state of emergency Monday, calling on the state of California and the sheriff’s office to help address criminal activity.

“We need resources,” Lewis Whipple, vice president of the tribal council, told SFGATE. “We need help.” 

Whipple said both Montelongo and Nicholas, who was his nephew, were of Native American descent. He said the violence in the community stems from issues with drugs and alcohol and overall “lawlessness” due to a lack of law enforcement.  

“Mendocino County has only six resident sheriff deputies per shift to patrol and serve the whole county,” Whipple said. Tribal police don’t have the authority to arrest or detain suspects, he added. (The Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office and the Round Valley tribal police did not provide comment before this story was published.)

Montelongo’s uncle was concerned after his niece did not return home Friday night, so he went looking for her. He found her body in an empty field in a rural neighborhood on the outskirts of downtown, according to a report from the sheriff’s office. The uncle called the sheriff’s office, and deputies arrived at the scene north of the 23800 block of Howard Street.

In their preliminary investigation, sheriff’s detectives allegedly learned Montelongo “had been socializing” with a 15-year-old girl the night before. “The pair knew each other as they both lived in Covelo,” the sheriff’s office said.

Detectives believe Montelongo was physically assaulted by the girl, resulting in Montelongo’s death. 

Montelongo attended Round Valley High School and played on the basketball team that recently went to the playoffs. She was also a member of a tribal youth unity group. “She was a bright kid, and she had a smile that would light up the room,” Whipple said. “She would befriend anybody. She and her little brother were inseparable. They went everywhere together.”

Nicholas was gunned down before sunrise on a Wednesday morning. When officers responded to the report of a shooting on Tabor Lane, they found him wounded by gunshots, unresponsive and without a pulse, the sheriff’s office said. Medics provided care but were unable to revive him. 

“He was a good kid, bright, liked to ride motorcycles with his friends,” Whipple said of his brother’s son.

After Nicholas’ death, the tribal council held a press conference March 31 at the Round Valley Tribal Administration building in Covelo, where “tribal members called out drugs and alcohol, a reluctance to report crimes to law enforcement, and law enforcement itself, for the many unsolved crimes on the reservation,” according to KZYX.

“I think everyone has an absolute right to say that we don’t have enough sheriff’s office presence throughout the county,” Mendocino County Sheriff Matthew Kendall said at the meeting. “We’re running on a crew that’s as low as any I’ve ever seen, and we’re still doing better than many other counties.”

Death is all too familiar for those living in Round Valley. A story about the recent homicides on the MendoFever news site mentions other tribal members who have been killed over the years, including Robert Want, Ivan Tillitson Junior, Khadijah Britton and Mike Pina. 

Whipple said Pina was his uncle and he was killed eight years ago. “A hunter found him,” he said. Because the community is so small, many know or are related to the victims.

Native American communities across the country are disproportionately affected by violence. Statistics shared by the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs show that the murder rate for women living on reservations is 10 times higher than the national average. What’s more, about 82% of American Indian and Alaska Native men have experienced violence in their lifetime.

The only town in the mountain-ringed Round Valley, Covelo is home to about 2,300 people; nearly half are American Indians from several different tribes, according to the 2000 census. A small portion of the town’s borders falls within the Round Valley Indian Reservation. The land was originally the home of the Yuki tribe, whose population in the Round Valley dropped from an estimated 20,000 to only a few hundred between 1854 and 1864 due to “settlement policies, murders, abductions, massacres, rape-induced venereal diseases and willful neglect,” according to a 2008 journal article in the Western Historical Quarterly. The tribe was absorbed into the Round Valley Indian Tribes in 1856 when the federal government forced a half-dozen other tribes to relocate to the newly formed reservation. 

“When the reservation was established, the Yuki people (as they came to be called) of Round Valley were forced into a difficult and unusual situation,” a statement says on the tribal council’s website. “… The Yuki had to share their home with strangers who spoke other languages, lived with other beliefs, and who used the land and its products differently.”

At Monday’s three-hour emergency tribal council meeting, attendees expressed outrage and grief over the recent killings while also offering hope that with help and community collaboration, the situation could improve.

“Two homicides of youth within our community in the last month,” said Randall Britton, president of the tribal council. “How are we going to come together to stop this? Enough is enough. We can’t continue this behavior any further.” 



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