(HOUSTON, Texas) — A 3-year-old in Houston, Texas, gained access to a firearm and “unintentionally” shot and killed a 4-year-old, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said.
Gonzalez said the preliminary investigation showed that the two children had been inside an apartment on Bammel North Houston Road. with one other person.
“The toddler was pronounced deceased at the scene,” he said on Twitter.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(CINCINNATI) — As “Cocaine Bear” is currently in theaters, a “Cocaine Cat” found in a Cincinnati neighborhood with cocaine in its system was released from animal care and is recovering at the Cincinnati Zoo.
The serval named Amiry, is an exotic cat native to Africa. Servals can grow to three times the size of an ordinary cat, weighing in at 20-40 pounds.
It is illegal to own servals in Ohio, said Ray Anderson, a spokesperson with Cincinnati Animal CARE.
The CAC, Hamilton County’s animal control services provider, said the dog wardens were alerted to reports of a leopard spotted in a tree in Oakley on Jan. 28.
Once they found Amiry, they brought him over to their facility, where the staff at the CAC were treating his broken leg and called in a big cat expert whose specialty was to handle animals of bigger sizes and various species.
“Our initial thought was the cat was a hybrid F1 Savannah, which is legal to own in Ohio, but our expert was pretty certain Amiry was a serval, which are illegal,” said Anderson.
Anderson said he was surprised and in awe of Amiry at first glance.
“This was the first exotic cat I saw,” Anderson told ABC News. “I was thinking what a gorgeous animal and unique cat, definitely something you don’t see every day.”
After the CAC conducted its DNA test to confirm Amiry was a serval, they also performed a toxicology test. They confirmed he was positive for cocaine exposure.
Amiry’s care lasted 36 hours at the CAC before he transferred to the Cincinnati Zoo, where there are more resources to care for Amiry’s full rehabilitation.
As of this week, Amiry is now part of the Cat Ambassador Program at the Cincinnati Zoo.
“Amiry is young and very curious,” said the lead trainer of the Cincinnati Zoo’s Cat Ambassador Program, Linda Castañeda, in a statement to ABC News. “He is exploring his new space and eating well, both great signs of progress. The CAP team is very excited to have him in our care. We are working on building trust and increasing his comfort as he adjusts to his new home.”
Members of the CAP team will keep an eye on his progress before allowing him to run, jump, and engage in other activities that might impair healing. They are concentrating on helping him acclimate to a new environment and his new care team.
Anderson said the investigation of Amiry’s surprise appearance in Cincinnati remains open and ongoing. Anderson added that the Hamilton County dog wardens are not pursuing charges and that the Ohio Department of Agriculture is also investigating.
Anderson said it was a memorable experience and hopes Amiry recovers 100 percent.
“We’re extremely proud of the work done in this case by the dog wardens and medical staff and are immensely appreciative to the Cincinnati Zoo for getting Amiry the care he needs.”
(SAN DIEGO) — At least eight people have died after two boats capsized near San Diego’s Black Beach, according to emergency officials.
The San Diego Fire-Rescue Department began receiving calls about the two panga fishing boats at about 11:30 p.m. Saturday, according to the San Diego Fire Department.
It is unclear what caused the boats to capsize, but fog, surf, and pitch-black conditions likely contributed, James Gartland, chief of the city of San Diego’s Lifeguard Division, told reporters during a press conference Sunday.
Authorities received a 911 call from a person reporting she was on a panga boat with 15 people that made it to the shore at Blacks Beach and that another panga with eight people had capsized and victims were in the water, fire officials said in a statement to ABC News.
Authorities used the phone’s GPS to get the location of the boats. When lifeguards and emergency crews arrived, they found two overturned boats and bodies in the water, officials said.
The first lifeguards on the scene found seven dead bodies. An additional body was found by CBP Air and Marine Operations officers, the fire department said.
One panga made it to shore with about eight people on board, Capt. James Spitler, sector commander of the Coast Guard San Diego, told reporters. The second panga then overturned with 15 people on board near Torrey Pines City Beach, Spitler said.
The victims were all adults, but it is unclear which boat they were on, Gartland said.
Gartland described the accident as “one of the worst maritime smuggling tragedies” in California.
Southern California has seen a 771% increase in human trafficking in the region since 2023, Spitler said.
The person who initially called 911 spoke Spanish, but the nationalities of the victims are unknown, Gartland said.
The rescue effort turned into a recovery overnight, which was complicated by foggy and misty conditions, first responders said.
“We did the best we could to recover people from the water and find survivors and the lifeguards,” Gartland said.
Lifeguards are still in recovery mode, Gartland said.
(TEXAS) — A Texas man is suing three women he alleges helped his now ex-wife obtain medication for an abortion.
Marcus Silva filed a wrongful death lawsuit on March 9 seeking more than $1 million in damages from each of the women, claiming their assistance in procuring the abortion medication is equivalent to aiding murder.
Silva’s ex-wife is not named as a defendant in the suit. The complaint notes that she is exempt under Texas law from liability as the person who underwent the abortion, and that Silva “is not pursuing any claims against her.”
Silva alleges his then-wife (the pair officially divorced in February, according to the lawsuit) discovered she was pregnant in July of last year — just one month after the overruling of Roe v. Wade and before a state law making performing an abortion a felony went into effect in Texas.
Silva claims two of the defendants shared information with her from Aid Access, an international group that ships abortion medication by mail, and a third defendant set up the delivery of the medication. The lawsuit includes as exhibits alleged text messages exchanged among the women.
According to the complaint, Silva intends to sue the manufacturer of the medication as well once it is identified.
Silva is represented by Jonathan Mitchell, a lawyer who helped create a Texas bill banning abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy, and Republican State Rep. Briscoe Cain.
After the fall of Roe v. Wade, legal battles over medication abortion in states that restrict the procedure have amplified. Walgreens recently said it will not sell mifepristone, an abortion pill, in 20 states that had threatened legal action if they did.
“We are outraged, but we are not surprised,” Wendy Davis, the senior adviser of Planned Parenthood Texas Votes, said in a statement slamming Silva’s lawsuit.
Davis called the lawsuit a “direct result of the dangerous policies championed by Governor Greg Abbott and his supporters. It is state-sanctioned harassment and we will not stand for it.”
Earlier this week, five women sued the state over its strict abortion laws, stating they were denied the procedure even though their lives were threatened.
Nancy Northup, the president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said the lawsuit was filed “to stop the unnecessary pain, suffering, injury and life threatening complications caused by Texas’s abortion ban.”
“This is the first lawsuit of its kind. It is the first lawsuit in which individual women have sued a state for the harm that they endured because abortion care has been criminalized in the wake of Roe’s reversal,” Northup said earlier this week at a news conference outside the Texas Capitol.
Alexandra Hutzler, ABC News
(TEXAS) — A Texas man is suing three women he alleges helped his now ex-wife obtain medication for an abortion.
Marcus Silva filed a wrongful death lawsuit on March 9 seeking more than $1 million in damages from each of the women, claiming their assistance in procuring the abortion medication is equivalent to aiding murder.
Silva’s ex-wife is not named as a defendant in the suit. The complaint notes that she is exempt under Texas law from liability as the person who underwent the abortion, and that Silva “is not pursuing any claims against her.”
Silva alleges his then-wife (the pair officially divorced in February, according to the lawsuit) discovered she was pregnant in July of last year — just one month after the overruling of Roe v. Wade and before a state law making performing an abortion a felony went into effect in Texas.
Silva claims two of the defendants shared information with her from Aid Access, an international group that ships abortion medication by mail, and a third defendant set up the delivery of the medication. The lawsuit includes as exhibits alleged text messages exchanged among the women.
According to the complaint, Silva intends to sue the manufacturer of the medication as well once it is identified.
Silva is represented by Jonathan Mitchell, a lawyer who helped create a Texas bill banning abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy, and Republican State Rep. Briscoe Cain.
After the fall of Roe v. Wade, legal battles over medication abortion in states that restrict the procedure have amplified. Walgreens recently said it will not sell mifepristone, an abortion pill, in 20 states that had threatened legal action if they did.
“We are outraged, but we are not surprised,” Wendy Davis, the senior adviser of Planned Parenthood Texas Votes, said in a statement slamming Silva’s lawsuit.
Davis called the lawsuit a “direct result of the dangerous policies championed by Governor Greg Abbott and his supporters. It is state-sanctioned harassment and we will not stand for it.”
Earlier this week, five women sued the state over its strict abortion laws, stating they were denied the procedure even though their lives were threatened.
Nancy Northup, the president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said the lawsuit was filed “to stop the unnecessary pain, suffering, injury and life threatening complications caused by Texas’s abortion ban.”
“This is the first lawsuit of its kind. It is the first lawsuit in which individual women have sued a state for the harm that they endured because abortion care has been criminalized in the wake of Roe’s reversal,” Northup said earlier this week at a news conference outside the Texas Capitol.
(CALIFORNIA) — A Hayward, California, cremation business that had its license was suspended in January was found in possession of six bodies and the cremated remains of 154 people in a warehouse, according to the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office.
The business’s license to store remains was suspended last year, but it still had remains stored in the warehouse dating back to 2013, according to authorities.
The Coroner’s Bureau is working to identify the remains and notify next of kin. The coroner said it has received several calls about the remains and has been able to connect three people with their loved ones’ remains so far, according to the sheriff’s office.
A fourth unnamed individual was contacted regarding his father’s remains, but he told the corner’s staff that he was in possession of his father’s remains.
“Since we have them, he obviously has someone else’s ashes,” Lt. Tya Modeste told ABC News.
Oceanview Cremations Corporation had allegedly been operating on a suspended license, going back to 2018, Modeste told ABC San Francisco station KGO.
“That’s how they ended up incorporating the warehouse. And having them stored there. So they actually weren’t on their premises. But the issue there, is the warehouse was not licensed to store the remains either,” Modeste told KGO.
The coroner’s office was notified that the business was continuing its operations and had remains in its possession on Feb. 28, when it was alerted by the California Cemetery and Funeral Board.
The Coroner’s Bureau and a county-contracted funeral home responded to the warehouse to recover the remains on March 1.
“Family members indicated that after their calls to Oceanview Cremations’ owner, Robert Smith, went unanswered, they believed their loved ones had been cremated or scattered at sea as requested,” Modeste said in a statement.
Officials said if you used Oceanview Cremations for final arrangements between 2013 and 2022 and are uncertain of their disposition or the whereabouts of their cremated remains, you can contact the Alameda County Coroner’s Bureau at 510-382-3000.
(CALIFORNIA) — Over 8,500 residents have been urged to evacuate immediately after a 100-foot-wide breach emerged along California’s Pajaro River around midnight Saturday morning as the state has faced a series of storms.
The levee break comes as the state faces unrelenting rain, which could last until Wednesday.
“My heart hurts tonight for the residents of Pajaro. We were hoping to avoid and prevent this situation, but the worst case scenario has arrived with the Pajaro River overtopping and levee breaching at about midnight,” Luis Alejo, chair of the Monterey County Board of Supervisors, said in a tweet.
During the breach, Monterey County Water Resources Agency and the California Department of Water Resources were conducting onsite flood-fighting efforts at the levee due to the rising waters.
After the levee break occurred, the sheriff’s office did 60 rescues from the area, according to Monterey County officials.
Four high-water vehicles are in the area, and additional vehicles are en route to Pajaro. Dive, search and rescue teams, as well as damage assessment teams are also en route, according to Monterey County officials.
“Some residents evacuated yesterday and overnight but did not leave the area and we are working on getting them transported to emergency shelters. MST is providing free transportation to shelters, and temporary evacuation points,” the county said in a statement Saturday.
The Salinas River has flooded in the area of San Ardo and Cattleman Road, which leads into the community, according to Monterey County.
Restoration work on the levee will resume Saturday during the daylight hours, officials said.
State officials conducted door-to-door notification and evacuation efforts throughout the day Friday and upon the levee break.
As of early Saturday morning, officials have been assisting residents who did not evacuate earlier after receiving evacuation orders. Residents in the evacuation zone who need help should call 911 immediately, Monterey County officials said.
The Monterey County Sheriff’s Office, North Monterey County Fire and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection are conducting evacuations.
The Monterey Salinas Transit is transporting community members in the evacuation zone to shelters. The closest evacuation shelter to the Community of Pajaro is at the Santa Cruz Fairground. There are additional shelters in Salinas at Compass Church and a temporary evacuation center at the Prunedale Library.
(TEXAS) — Texas authorities are advising residents to avoid traveling to Mexico during spring break “due to the ongoing violence throughout that country.”
The Texas Department of Public Safety issued an advisory warning against travel to the country for spring break “and beyond.”
“Drug cartel violence and other criminal activity represent a significant safety threat to anyone who crosses into Mexico right now,” Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw said in a statement on Friday. “We have a duty to inform the public about safety, travel risks and threats. Based on the volatile nature of cartel activity and the violence we are seeing there; we are urging individuals to avoid travel to Mexico at this time.”
The warning was issued a week after four Americans were kidnapped shortly after crossing the border into Matamoros, Mexico, which is in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas just south of Brownsville, Texas.
Two of the Americans, including one who was traveling to the region for a cosmetic procedure, were rescued on March 7. Two others were found dead.
Five alleged Gulf Cartel members have since been charged with aggravated kidnapping and murder.
A source close to the investigation told ABC News that investigators believe the gunmen wrongly believed the kidnapped Americans were rival human traffickers who were in an area of Mexico categorized as “do not travel” by the U.S. government due to the increased risk of crime and kidnapping.
The most popular Mexican tourist destinations have been rated a level two by the State Department, where travelers are advised to “exercise increased caution” — the same rating given to France, Germany, the U.K. and a dozen other countries.
AAA recently reported that international travel is up 30% compared to last year, and Cancun, Riviera Maya and Mexico City are listed as top spring break destinations.
LATEST NEWS: DPS Urges Texans to Avoid Spring Break Travel to Mexico
AUSTIN – @TxDPS is urging Texans to avoid traveling to Mexico during spring break, and beyond, due to the ongoing violence throughout that country.
Those who do decide to travel to Mexico are advised to register with the nearest U.S. Embassy or Consulate prior to their departure, Texas authorities said.
“DPS understands many people do travel to Mexico without incident, but the serious risks cannot be ignored,” the agency said. “All travelers are encouraged to carefully research any planned trips and, again, consider postponing or canceling travel to Mexico at this time.”
(MEXICO) — Three women have been missing for two weeks after traveling from Texas to Mexico for a shopping trip, authorities said.
The women — Dora Alicia Cervantes Saenz, 53, Marina Perez Rios, 48, and Maritza Trinidad Perez Rios, 47 — have been missing since Feb. 25, according to missing person posters posted by the Local Commission for the Search of Persons in the Mexican state of Nuevo León.
Two of the women are from Peñitas, a Texas town on the U.S.-Mexico border, Peñitas Police Chief Roel Bermea told ABC Rio Grande Valley affiliate KRGV. The three left on Feb. 24 to go to a flea market in Montemorelos, a city in Nuevo León, he told the station.
Saenz is a friend of the Rioses, who are sisters, The Associated Press reported.
Peñitas police started looking into their disappearance after the husband of one of the missing women contacted the department, Bermea said. Though after several days with no contact, his investigator contacted the FBI “to see what they could do,” the chief said.
“We did contact the FBI to let them know the ladies were considered missing,” Bermea told KRGV, adding that there’s “not much we can do ourselves” in a missing persons case in another country.
The FBI confirmed in a statement to KRGV that it is aware of the matter but that “no information is being provided at this time.”
News of their disappearance comes after four Americans were kidnapped shortly after crossing the border into Matamoros, Mexico, which is in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas just south of Brownsville, Texas, on March 3. Two of the Americans, including one who was traveling to the region for a cosmetic procedure, were rescued on March 7, though two were found dead. Five alleged Gulf Cartel members have since been charged with aggravated kidnapping and murder.
Bermea told KRGV this is the first time they are investigating a disappearance in another country.
“We’re just concerned,” he told the station. “We really haven’t had any other incidents that I can recall of something like this happening in another country.”
The women were traveling in a green mid-1990s Chevy Silverado, authorities said. Anyone with information is urged to contact the FBI or the Peñitas Police Department at 956-581-3345.
ABC News’ Victoria Beaulé contributed to this report.
(ARLINGTON, Va.) — For nearly 25 years, Chris Johnson has been entangled in a deep mystery that he said has wrecked his family and his life.
It began in 1998, when Johnson found his fiancée Andrea Cincotta, 52, dead inside their Arlington, Virginia, apartment. She had been strangled and crudely stuffed inside a bedroom closet.
Although immediately under suspicion by the police, Johnson was never charged. Then things changed in 2018. Convicted rapist Bobby Joe Leonard alleged to investigators he was offered money by a man he believed to be Cincotta’s boyfriend to kill her.
This led to Arlington prosecutors charging Johnson with murder-for-hire in November 2021.
Johnson, 61, pleaded not guilty to the charge. He has maintained his innocence, and still grieves for Cincotta.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there to protect her,” he told ABC News’ Ryan Smith in an exclusive interview with “20/20.”
The “20/20” episode, which airs March 10 at 9 p.m. ET and streams on Hulu the next day, features more of the candid interview with Johnson, who was acquitted of his charge in October, footage from the police investigation and exclusive interviews with jurors.
Johnson returned home on Aug. 21, 1998, and said he couldn’t find Cincotta, who worked as a librarian. Hours later, he said he opened the bedroom closet and found her body inside.
After calling 911, Johnson was interrogated by Arlington police for several days. He did not request an attorney. He told “20/20” that detectives were aggressive and yelled in his face that he murdered his fiancée.
At one point a detective told Johnson that Cincotta was alive after he came home and that his fingerprints were found on her. After the interrogation, Johnson learned that that was a lie.
“I was in shock. How can they get away with it? How can they do that?,” Johnson said. “You trust the police, the police don’t lie….I literally had no reason to believe that they’re lying to me.”
After 25 hours of questioning over several days, Johnson said he was exhausted and began to tell officers a “dream vision” of how he imagined arguing and hurting his fiancée. He wrote down his vision and didn’t ask for an attorney.
“If you had gone through what I went through for as long as I went through it and you had just found the woman you love dead, you’re not in a good place,” Johnson said.
It turns out, the details Johnson had provided in his supposed admission do not match the autopsy results – she had died from strangulation – not a blow to the head
Arlington Police released Johnson and did not charge him at the time.
Cincotta’s son Kevin, who was 24 at the time, did provide investigators with a key clue. He remembered that his mother told him that she gave her computer to a man who was working at her apartment complex.
Johnson had also told police about the man, telling them “it was not like her to talk with a perfect stranger – especially to allow him in the apartment.”
Although Kevin Cincotta didn’t know the man’s name, investigators were able to identify the person as Bobby Joe Leonard. Leonard was in a Philadelphia jail after being arrested for allegedly assaulting his wife.
The charges were later dropped.
Virginia investigators questioned Leonard in jail, and took his DNA and fingerprints. He denied murdering Cincotta and his DNA and fingerprints weren’t be found in the home.
Johnson’s attorney Frank Salvato alleged at Johnson’s trial that investigators’ handling of the crime scene compromised the touch DNA found on Cincotta’s throat so it could not be tested.
The prosecutors said detectives could have done a better job processing the crime scene, but they insisted that this case wasn’t about the crime scene, it was about Johnson hiring Leonard to kill Cincotta.
Leonard would be arrested a year later on rape, abduction and attempted murder charges in Fairfax for brutally attacking a 13-year-old girl and leaving her for dead in a closet. He was convicted in 2000 and sentenced to life in prison.
Around the same time, Johnson met Ginnie Grevett and the two would eventually marry. In an exclusive interview, Grevett told ABC News that Johnson told her about the murder investigation on their first date.
“I accepted it 100%,” she said of Johnson’s denial of murdering his fiancée. “It never occurred to me ever that he might have had anything to do with it whatsoever.”
Johnson said Kevin Cincotta accepted his assurances that he had nothing to do with Andrea Cincotta’s murder and they initially remained friends. But the two drifted apart and rarely spoke until 2018 when Kevin Cincotta asked to get together for lunch.
Johnson didn’t know that Kevin Cincotta now suspected that he might be involved in his mother’s death, and was working with investigators on the cold case.
In an attempt to catch Chris saying something incriminating, Kevin was wearing a wire.
During the lunch, Kevin tells Chris that he has seen the police file and now has a different take on the case. Kevin told Chris that he believed Chris killed his mother.
Chris Johnson told “20/20, “I was really hurt. I was like, I wonder if he was wearing a wire because of the way he was asking the questions and everything like that.”
That same year, investigators caught a break after Leonard claimed to have found God and confessed to the murder of Andrea Cincotta and made a shocking new allegation.
He told detectives that he strangled the librarian to death in her apartment, but he also alleged that he received a call and a $5,000 offer from an unnamed man who he believed to be Cincotta’s boyfriend to commit the crime.
Officers and prosecutors would use his allegations to charge Johnson with murder for hire in 2021. Johnson denied being involved or contacting Leonard.
“I was just like, it’s ridiculous. I was racking my brain. How in the world did they come up with this?” Johnson said.
During the trial, prosecutors brought up Johnson’s “dream vision” statement during his original questioning in 1998. They also put Leonard on the stand who testified in detail about how he killed Cincotta.
Salvato, who represented Johnson at trial along with Libbey Van Pelt and Manuel Leiva, noted that Leonard wouldn’t take the stand until prosecutors agreed to put a request into the Virginia Dept of Corrections to have him moved to a different, lower-security prison.
During cross-examination, Salvato questioned Leonard’s story that he knew that Andrea Cincotta’s boyfriend was the man who called him about arranging the murder because he recognized her number on his landline’s caller ID.
The defense brought in Leonard’s ex-wife Frances Hudson who testified that their landline phone did not have caller ID when they lived together. She testified that she moved out of their home weeks before the murder after Leonard assaulted her.
Prosecutors admitted there was no forensic evidence tying Leonard and Johnson to the alleged murder-for-hire plot, claiming it was because too much time had passed to collect phone records and other verifying information.
Salvato pointed out an inconsistency in Leonard’s testimony: he said that Cincotta didn’t struggle when he attacked her, but the autopsy showed signs of bruising on Cincotta consistent with someone fighting back.
When the case was presented to the jury in October, it took just one hour to reach a verdict. Johnson and his attorneys were shocked by the speedy result.
“They gave it to the clerk. The clerk said, ‘Not guilty,'” Johnson said. “It was a relief.”
Salvato claimed in a “20/20” interview after the verdict that he believed Johnson should never have been brought to trial.
“As he has said from day one,” Salvato said, “he had nothing to do with Andrea Cincotta’s death.”
Two members of the jury spoke with “20/20” about their decision and said there was a lot of doubt in the prosecution’s case.
“You don’t hire someone to kill someone whom you’ve never met,” jury forewoman Chen Ling told “20/20. “And, out of all the Bobby Joe Leonard testimony, he never claimed that they met. I feel like that was, for me, the important detail that gave reasonable doubt.”
Another juror told “20/20” he questioned the tactics used during the interrogation with Johnson.
“It seemed to me that the police were just hammering home what they thought to be the case. They weren’t taking his initial statements for face value. So it was pushing him to get to another answer,” the juror said.
Kevin Cincotta, who testified against Johnson during the trial, declined to sit down for an on-camera interview with ABC News in time for air. He provided ABC News with a detailed account of the reasons he is still convinced Johnson is guilty of murder for hire.
Some of the reasons included what he calls suspicious behavior and alleged discrepancies in Johnson’s story and information he believes Bobby Joe Leonard could only have received from Johnson.
Kevin Cincotta added he doesn’t forgive Leonard, who was issued an additional life sentence for Cincotta’s murder, but believes his allegations against Johnson.
The Arlington County Police Department declined to comment to ABC News on the criticisms raised by Johnson and his attorneys.
The Commonwealth’s Attorney of Arlington County said in an email to ABC News, “We hope that through the process we have helped bring some closure to Ms. Cincotta’s family. However, I must respect the verdict of the jury. We prosecuted a tough case in the fairest way we could, and that’s where I believe I should leave it.”
Although Johnson is currently free from prosecution, he said that he is forever changed by the experience.
“Something like this… You’re never going to be the same,” he said. “I used to be a lot more trusting. I trusted everyone, trusted the police, and now my eyes have been opened.”
(REDMOND, Wash.) — A podcaster and her husband were shot and killed in their Redmond, Washington, home after a suspected stalker broke into the house at 1:45 a.m. Friday.
The stalking suspect, 38-year-old Ramin Khodakaramrezaei, was also found dead in the house.
Redmond police responded to a report of a shooting and found three people dead in the house after the mother of the female victim had escaped the home and called police from a neighbor’s house.
Upon arrival, officers found a man who lived in the house lying on the ground in the front yard with a gunshot wound to the chest. Officers attempted to perform lifesaving measures, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.
Inside the home, officers found the bodies of Khodakaramrezaei and the man’s wife, who was allegedly being stalked by the suspect.
The suspect had broken into the house through a window, Redmond Police spokesperson Jill Green told Seattle ABC affiliate KOMO.
The suspect also had an altercation with the mother before she was able to escape.
“Khodakaramrezaei had reportedly listened to the female victim’s podcasts and began communicating with her. The victim and suspect became friends, but when things escalated, she filed a no-contact order against him,” Redmond Police said in a press release Friday.
Police were familiar with the victim and residence as there was an ongoing stalking investigation.
“Our hearts go out to the victim’s family and the Redmond community following this horrific tragedy,” Redmond Police Chief Darrell Lowe said in a statement. “This is an incredibly sad situation and the worst possible outcome of a stalking case. We will continue investigating what led to this tragic loss.”
