CALIFORNIA CITY, Calif. (KGET) — As news of the arrests spread across Kern County, reaction was swift in California City and just doors away from the West family home.
California City is one step closer to getting closure on the alleged murders of Orson and Orrin West.
The news reaching neighbors from the home the boys supposedly lived at in California City.
District Attorney Cynthia Zimmer said the boys were murdered three months before they were reported missing. That would mean they may have died before the Wests moved to California City. That doesn’t surprise some neighbors.
“I’m hurt. I’m hurt,” Michael Strickland a neighbor said. “The children have been dead way before they have been pronounced missing. That’s truly sad bro. That’s truly sad. Them people get what they deserve. I hope they rot in hell. They deserve that.”
The next-door neighbor said Trezell and Jacqueline kept to themselves. Now all the neighbors said the couple acted secretively.
One neighbor who regularly walks in the neighborhood for exercise says, the Wests only ever went out at night.
The neighbor also says the Wests parked their large white RV in front of their garage so it was difficult to see people coming and going from the house.
“That was a tragedy for all of us, for all of us,” Jorge Quelopana another neighbor said. “Even though most people here they never seen the kids. They didn’t know the kids.”
All the neighbors 17 News spoke with said they have never actually seen the boys. Some of them said they think the boys have never made it into the city.
