Anaheim CA police have arrested a suspect they say is responsible for killing four homeless Orange County men in recent weeks.
They apprehended Itzcoatl Ocampo, 23, a former Marine who served in Iraq, on the evening of Jan. 13 after bystanders chased him from the scene of what appeared to be the latest in a string of fatal attacks against homeless men in the area.
In a strange twist to the story, Ocampo’s own father is homeless. According to an interview that appeared on Jan.15 in the Los Angeles Times, the suspect discussed the killings with his father several weeks ago, urging him to be careful.
The younger man showed his father, Refugio Ocampo, a flier seeking information on the deaths of one of the homeless men and warned, “Look at this, I’m worried
something might happen to you.”
“He was very afraid for me because I am homeless,” Refugio Ocampo told the newspaper. He said he sleeps in the cab of a truck in a parking lot in Fullerton.
“I told him, ‘You don’t need to worry about me, mijo. I am a survivor,’ ” Ocampo said.
To those who knew him, Itzcoatl Ocampo appeared increasingly troubled after returning from Iraq in 2010. For the last year, he had been telling relatives that he was seeing and hearing things, the Times reported.
Ocampo was arrested about a quarter of a mile from a shopping center where police found the body of John Berry, 64, near a trash bin behind a restaurant.
“We are extremely confident that we have the man who is responsible for the murders of all four homeless men in Orange County,” Anaheim Police Chief John Welter said on Jan. 14. Police said they would seek four counts of murder.
