I'm finding the media reports a bit confusing and have a few basic questions I can't find clarification on.
FWIW, I'm quite familiar with Malibu Creek SP, although it's been a few years since I've been out there. I've traversed even some of the more remote parts on foot and on horseback. While much of the terrain is difficult and remote, the campsites are not at all and attract IME mostly the recreational/family camping crowd. Weekends are very busy, lots of kids, lots of city people.
1. Who made the initial 911 call about the gunshots?
2. Was it one gunshot or multiple?
3. Is it correct that the BIL entered the victim's tent and found him bleeding?
4. Was the discovery of the victim before or after the 911 call? Were the police there (on the property) when the body was discovered?
5. From
Malibu campground where father fatally shot is closed down as safety precaution:
Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Lt. Rodney Moore said investigators are sifting through evidence from the scene and that the firearm has not been found. Detectives have begun reviewing other shootings in the area but have no evidence yet that ties any prior incidents to the killing, he said.
“The theory we are working with is he was shot inside the tent,” Moore said. “The children were inside the tent too.”
What does this mean? Is the sheriff just ruling out that he was shot outside the tent and then returned, bleeding, to the tent. Or is the theory that someone entered the tent and shot him?
6. Why did early reports state that the victim died from a shot to the '
upper torso' and only later, per the coroner, identify the fatal injury as a shot to the head (and the coroner said there were
not multiple gunshots)?
Reports say the victim was pronounced dead at the scene. There are certain specific circumstances in which a person can be pronounced dead on scene in California. (I was licensed as an EMT in LA County so know this well.) Lividity, rigor, evisceration, exposed brain matter, decapitation - the whole list for LA County is
here. So this victim fit the criteria somehow by the time EMS arrived.
But how do you declare someone dead from a gunshot wound to the torso - which apparently didn't exist - and entirely miss the fatal head wound?
I will much appreciate any answers or links to more accurate reports. I'm struggling to fit this in with what I know of the park and the campgrounds. I'm not sure where a random shooter would shoot randomly from, for example. And I'm not sure that a single gunshot would rouse much suspicion among LA residents - odd gunfire (especially at holidays) is not so uncommon in many parts of LA and once you get used to it, you sleep through it.
I do hope they find who's responsible.
