A suspect who committed a series of homeless murders in downtown Los Angeles has been arrested.
The arrested suspect is also suspected of a robbery and shooting death in San Dimas. A man in his 30s was arrested on suspicion of shooting and killing four people, including three homeless people and an LA County government employee, over four days last week.
The arrested suspect is 33-year-old Jerid Joseph Powell, who is accused of killing three homeless people on the streets of Los Angeles last week, as well as a robbery and shooting death in San Dimas.
The police department held a press conference on the 2nd, last Saturday, and announced that the arrested suspect was not only accused of shooting and killing three homeless people who were sleeping alone on the streets of Los Angeles over a four-day period from the 26th to the 29th of last month, but also shot and killed a man in his 40s in San Dimas.
He said he was taken into custody on suspicion of following him to commit a robbery and then shooting him to death.
Between the 26th and 29th of last month, three homeless men were found dead in different neighbourhoods in downtown Los Angeles. The first murder occurred at 3 a.m. on Sunday the 26th in the 800 block of West 110th Street, the second occurred at 5 a.m. on Monday the 27th in the 800 block of East 7th Street, and the third occurred at 2 p.m. on Wednesday the 29th.
It happened in the 30th minute at 18 South Avenue and South Pasadena Avenue.
The murdered homeless people turned out to be black and Hispanic men, and all were shot and killed while sleeping alone on the sidewalk or in an open space. On the night of the 28th, last Tuesday, 42-year-old LA County employee Nicholas Symbolon was shot and killed by a robber who followed him to his home in San Dimas and robbed him of his belongings from his garage.
Mr. Symbolon was found dead in his Tesla car.
The police used license plate identification technology to determine that the vehicle the suspect in the three homeless killings and the San Dimas robbery murder was driving at the time of the crime was the same BMW and conducted a tracking investigation into the vehicle.
The suspect driving the vehicle was caught by police in Beverly Hills last Wednesday night while monitoring a vehicle for traffic violations. Police found the firearm used in the crime in the suspect’s car and arrested the suspect.