Police still to find motive for the killings, suicide.
Bureau Report
SAN FRANCISCO: The connection between Ali Syed, a 20-year-old part-time student who shot three people dead before taking his own life with a shotgun, and the woman killed in his room, in Orange County, remains unknown, reported the Orange County Register.
Even Syed’s parents, who were home at the time of the murder, have no idea who the woman was and how she got into the home, reported CBS.
Police are now running the woman’s fingerprints to unlock her identity, and hoping that it would explain Syed’s motive in the killings. The two other deceased victims who were shot dead in the street were identified yesterday.
Business owner Melvin Lee Edwards, 69, was on his way to work when he crossed paths with Syed, who forced the man out of his BMW before shooting him ‘execution-style,’ witnesses said.
The second male victim, 26-year-old construction worker Jeremy Lewis of Fullerton, was killed a short time later at an electronics store in Tustin before Syed took off in his small truck.
Syed’s 25-minute shooting spree through Orange County left a bloody trail of dead and injured victims in a series of carjackings and gunfire, police said.
“I killed somebody,†he reportedly told the driver of a pickup during one carjacking. “Today is my last day.â€
Syed’s parents told investigators they did not know the woman and had never seen her before, said Jim Amormino, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, said the Register.
“There’s no indication of a motive†to the shootings, Tustin police Chief Scott Jordan said.
Property records identify the home’s owners as Irfan and Sarwat Syed, said the Register. Amormino emphasized that Sarwat was not the unidentified woman found shot to death in the home.
Syed had no criminal record. He was unemployed but had been taking college-prep classes at Saddleback College. He was enrolled this semester in a computer-maintenance class, college spokeswoman Jennie McCue said.
He graduated in 2010 from Junipero Serra High School in San Juan Capistrano, where he attended the continuation school, said Marcus Walton, a school district spokesman.
Police had not been called before to the Ladera Ranch condominium where Syed lived with his parents and other children in the family.
Neighbors said the family included a younger brother and sister.
Smith, the neighbor, had met the parents, both of whom he described as very nice and the first to say hello when he moved in, and knew they had two children, but he had never met Ali Syed, said the Register.
“I swear, I don’t even know if I’ve ever seen him,” Smith said. “He’s a ghost to me.”
Josh Hubner, 15, said he sits next to the younger sister in his math class at San Juan Hills High School.
Hubner said Syed looked like a guy who kept to himself when he saw him a couple times around the neighborhood.
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