Trip report as promised! Very long! And I'm happy to answer any questions...
'Good morning', we said to the LASD deputy manning the desk at the Lost Hills Station. 'We were going to go hiking in the park but we've heard there are problems there.'
The deputy shrugged. 'Well, someone was killed there camping. It's probably been maybe two months by now.'
'Oh.
Killed.' We'd taken the strategy of seeing what LASD had to say without indicating that we knew anything about the murder. 'Have they solved it?'
'No. They haven't solved it. They don't know who did it.'
'So is there any kind of public advisory about this for people using the park?'
'At this point I tell everyone that this shouldn't make you more cautious than prior. You know you should always know who's around you, know where you're walking, know where you're at, report anything suspicious.'
This was odd advice and irrelevant given that someone was shot and killed while
sleeping in his tent in a campground maintained by California State Parks. The victim most definitely knew who was around him, knew where he was, etc. None of this saved him from a nighttime shooter.
We pushed on. 'Have there been any other incidents or is that the only one?'
'That's the only one.'
No, it wasn't. We knew that. Given the reality of the eight or nine known park area shooting incidents since 2016, we weren't going to accept that answer. When pressed - 'So no more shooting incidents in the area? No other reports of gunshots?' - she offered that cars had been shot at 'very sporadically' and 'early in the morning'.
She added, 'But people should always be careful. It shouldn't take something like this for people to say 'Let me be careful.'
Again, under the circumstances, this was useless advice. None of the three people shot at in the park area – James Rogers, Meliss Tatangelo and Tristan Beaudette – lacked for awareness and/or care. The latter two were sleeping in a well-maintained, well-populated, ranger-patrolled campground. Rogers is a wildlife biologist and an experienced outdoorsperson. He was sleeping in a hammock near the Backbone Trail.
'Ok, thank you!' We could see we weren't going to learn much more here.
The plan was to park at the Hindu temple on Las Virgenes Road and walk the short distance across the road and in to the campground. If you look on Google Maps, you'll see it's a only couple of hundred metres straight-line distance from Las Virgenes to the campground. There's a partial-access road heading into the park as well – it says 'Crags Rd' on the Google map but the street sign says 'Waycross' – a narrow paved track for utility or drainage maintenance closed off to traffic by a series of gates.
For an even shorter way in on foot to the campground, you can walk along the Waycross track to where it joins the Campfire Center Path (as seen on the
campground map) or you can take any number of well-worn deer trails for the shortest, most direct route. There were half a dozen deer out doing exactly that. If you take the campfire path, you enter the campground between campsites 52 and 53 so that you're almost directly facing campsite 51. However, to get closer to 49/51 across the campground roadway, you have to walk past 52 and 53. (Later, we asked the park ranger if those were occupied on the shooting night but he said he 'couldn't answer that'.)
Really though, there's a very simple straight-line route via deer trail from Las Virgenes to directly across from 51. I took some photos and you can see the utility poles that line the road from the campground. You are very close to the road here.
Veryclose. In the daylight hours, the road noise is constant, you can hear every car go by. There is no difficulty whatsoever in taking this path.
The campground itself is a flat, open expanse. There are a couple of bathroom structures in the center, trees here and there. Looking over the surroundings, it seems unlikely that the shots could have come from a high vantage point like the hills as some WSers have speculated/suggested. The actual hills are a good distance away – the campground is not in a canyon-type area – and shooting from the hills would require shooting through live oaks trees. As a shooter and a shooting coach, I don't see it as a plausible scenario. (I'll try to post some photos so you can see.) The lines of sight are excellent on the ground but not so much from the higher elevations beyond.
We wandered around, alone except for the deer and some gophers, and discussed how anyone coming in through the Las Virgenes routes would have had to bypass sites 53, 53 and 50 to shoot at one of the tents on sites 49/51. Were those other sites occupied? We don't know. If they were occupied, who was there? Don't know that either.
In between Las Virgenes Road and the campground, there are two park buildings that look like houses that are used by biologists and other people working in the park. On the map, this are is labeled 'Angeles District Headquarters'. We went up the drive to see if we could find someone to talk to. The first building was empty but when we knocked on the door of the second house, a woman answered. She'd been working in the park 'off-and-on' for about ten years. She wasn't there when the shooting happened. She said that since the shooting, workers no longer stay overnight or after dark in the park. She said she didn't know a lot about the incident and that LASD wasn't giving the park workers much info (about that incident or any of the shootings). No staff briefings or anything like that. She suggested we go to the Admin building at the park entrance and see if we could speak with Tony Hoffman, the park superintendent.
At the Admin building, we were told that Superintendent Hoffman was in a meeting. While we waited, we saw a flyer on the desk warning visitors of the dangers of... ticks. We asked a staff member if they had any kind of flyer or advisory about the shootings in the park. 'Why?' he said. We answered: 'Because you have an advisory on ticks and ticks are the least of our worries at the moment.'
He said that he thought the sheriffs had some flyers 'last week maybe' and there was something about it on the website but there was nothing posted in the park. We explained that the website simply noted that the campground was closed pending 'an investigation' and that it didn't elaborate so people might think it's a gas leak or contaminated well as opposed to a homicide. He said he wasn't aware of the specifics on the website but he did say that the people who live around the park are very concerned.
Tony Hoffman emerged from his meeting and the first thing I'll say is he couldn't have been nicer. He took a lot of time to talk to us about various aspects of park safety and protocols for patrolling the park. However, he couldn't tell us much about the shooting at all. It seems that LASD is keeping a tight lid on things, although the CPS rangers are doing 'little, localized investigations' in cooperation with LASD. He said that the homicide hadn't seemed to deter the public at all, that people wanted to stay at the campground, even in sites 49/51, even on the night following the shooting. But staff are taking precautions and anyone there after dark is advised to call for a patrol escort if they feel unsafe going to their car or leaving the park.
We discussed daytime park and trail safety and he said that isn't an issue because all of the shooting incidents happened 'in the wee hours' (his words). This didn't make a whole lot of sense to us because the park is 8000 acres and very porous – you can access it easily and unseen from all sides. I've ridden my horse on the trails for hours and seen no one at all. Total isolation. So if you have a problem shooter in the park, there's really nothing to deter that person from expanding his activities to daylight hours.
Walk in, shoot, walk out.
We thanked Spt. Hoffman for the conversation and we meant every word of it. He was so generous with his time and so willing to talk to us.
Our next stop was at a veterinarian's office further south on the PCH. The vet lives in the area and he gave us his account of how the locals feel about the shootings. He no longer walks his dog in the park and he won't drive on Las Virgenes in those 'wee' hours. He said his local Nextdoor group has frequent postings like 'Did anyone hear shots last night?' and 'I thought I heard gunshots last night! Anyone else?' He actually read these off the screen to us. So locals are very worried about the shooter striking again.
I can't say we came away with any answers except that to see that the campground is a very easy target for anyone walking in from Las Virgenes Road. We couldn't see any obvious reasons of
why that tent,
why that particular spot. Or why the shooter would have either passed by or decided not to shoot at campsites that would have (if occupied, we still don't know) been closer to the walk in from the road.
As to the question
random or targeted?, no idea. The 'targeted' category breaks down into person-targeted and place-targeted – was the shooter after a specific person or was the shooter targeting the park campground or CPS as some sort of retributive measure? Or did the shooter just walk in from the road, fire multiple shots and slip back into the night? No way to know but all of those things are chillingly possible.
What it doesn't seem like is a plinker at night firing obliviously in the hills. Not at all. Whoever did this knew that he/she was shooting at the campground from relatively close range, even if they weren't aware of the immediate outcome.
And even with LASD's promise of increased patrols, the current reality in the MCSP area is not so promising. Very recently (mentioned on this thread) another body was dumped off Piuma Rd, which would lead you to believe that the patrols' presence has not been notd by the people who look for isolated spots in which to dump bodies. That doesn't exactly inspire confidence that they're deterring a possibly serial shooter and/or killer.
Let's hope there's a break in this case soon and that a state park campground can be a safe place for friends and families again.
