SANTA ANA, Calif. — Two young men were charged Tuesday with murder in the slayings of a California couple and family friend who were discovered after the couple's 6-year-old daughter called police.
Army Pfc. Joshua Acosta, 21, and Frank Felix, 25, were each charged with three counts of murder, and Acosta also faces possible sentencing enhancements for personal discharge of a firearm causing death, the Orange County district attorney's office said.
Acosta and Felix were friends with the couple's daughter and attended "furry" events where some participants dress up in colorful animal costumes, according to friends and their social media pages.
Prosecutors allege that Acosta was the gunman in the killings of Jennifer Yost, 39, her husband, Christopher Yost, 34, and their friend Arthur Boucher, 28.
This photo released by the Fullerton, Calif., Police Department shows Josh Acosta, 21, arrested and jailed in Fullerton Sunday, Sept. 25, 2016.
Photo Credit: Fullerton Police Department via AP
A district attorney's statement says the killings occurred when Acosta and Felix entered the Yosts' Fullerton home early Saturday.
Arraignment was expected later Tuesday. Neither man has been reachable for comment while being held in jail since the weekend.
The district attorney's office made no mention of a 17-year-old girl also taken into custody by Fullerton police in the case.
After the bodies were discovered Saturday, police said Jennifer Yost's 17-year-old daughter, Katlynn Goodwill Yost, was missing. When the teen's arrest was announced, police also said the daughter had been located but did not say whether she was the teen in custody.
Police were summoned to the home Saturday by the couple's younger daughter. She was not harmed, nor was her 9-year-old sister.
Melinda Giles said she became friends with Jennifer Yost after meeting her and her daughter last year at a gathering of "furries."
This photo released by the Fullerton, Calif., Police Department shows Frank Felix, 25, arrested and jailed in Fullerton on Sept. 25, 2016. Felix is one of two men arrested in connection with the murders of two men and a woman at a Fullerton home Saturday, Sept. 24.
Photo Credit: Fullerton Police Department via AP
She said she also saw Felix and Acosta at furry events, and had met Felix at the Yost family home.
She said Jennifer Yost told her several weeks ago that she had forbidden Felix from seeing her daughter.
"To protect her daughter, Chris and Jenn were like, 'We don't want you to be friends with our daughter anymore,'" Giles said Monday, adding that the couple was warm, generous and recently helped her move into her new home. "It is really sad because they didn't deserve that. Those little girls didn't deserve to wake up to dead parents."
Boucher was staying with the Yosts at the time of the killings.
A makeshift memorial is seen Sept. 25, 2016, on the front porch of the home where three adults were found dead the day before in Fullerton, Calif. Two men were arrested and a 17-year-old girl was detained Sunday on suspicion of killing the three people inside the Southern California home over the weekend, police said.
Photo Credit: Amy Taxin/AP
Goodwill Yost is a high school senior and member of the Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps. Her social media pages show she is active in the furry community, where she was known as "Daydreamer," and many photos are posted.
She is seen wearing her military uniform in one, and others show a gray fox-wolf costume.
Felix is from Sun Valley, California.
A wheeled-vehicle mechanic, Acosta has been assigned to Fort Irwin, California, since last October, said Wayne V. Hall, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon. Acosta entered the service in March 2015 and previously was assigned to Fort Lee, Virginia, and Fort Jackson, South Carolina.
Contact information for his family was not immediately available.
