‘It’s either the streets or the fields’: one California farm town’s daily battle with gun violence

Big-city gun violence draws more attention, but rural towns like Delano have many more gun deaths per capita. Residents are desperate to figure out why

This is the first of three stories on gun violence in Delano. Read the next installment tomorrow

Patrick Orque distinctly remembers hanging out with a friend late one night, just after new year's 2020, when they heard gunshots.

They were in his friend's front yard, in Orque's home town of Delano, an agricultural community deep within California's central valley. The nearby Mexican restaurants and markets had closed up, and the town was quiet, as it often is at night, enveloped in a still expanse of vineyards and citrus groves.