O.C. shootings: ‘I think somebody’s shot,’ suspect’s mom tells 911
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A frantic woman called 911 at 4:45 a.m. Tuesday.
‘I think somebody’s shot ... in my house,’ she said. ‘Somebody’s shot. I think there’s somebody shot.’
Hysterical, the woman tried to answer the dispatcher’s questions. Her husband eventually took over the phone.
‘Can you please send somebody here?’ he said. ‘Our son lives with us and I think they got into a fight or something and we heard a gunshot.’
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Authorities released the tape of the 911 call made by the parents of Ali Syed, the 20-year-old accused of killing three people Tuesday and wounding three others before killing himself in a violent rampage across Orange County.
The 911 call was made from the family’s Ladera Ranch home on Red Leaf Lane, where Syed lived with his parents.
During the frantic call, the parents said that they were sleeping when they heard what they thought was a gunshot, coming from downstairs.
They did not investigate their son’s room, they told a dispatcher, but said they thought he had left the home in their SUV.
‘He’s gone out,’ the father said. ‘He took the car we have.... Yes, he’s not home right now. He drove away.’
They said they did not see a victim.
‘I have not gone in his room,’ the father said in answer to a dispatcher’s questions. ‘I don’t know what’s going on.’
Orange County Sheriff’s spokesman Jim Amormino said at an afternoon news conference that investigators do not know what set off Syed, who he described as a ‘loner’ and ‘gamer’ who ‘spent a lot of time alone in his room playing video games.’
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He left ‘no evidence, no note, no nothing that would explain this very bizarre, violent behavior,’ Amormino said. After talking to witnesses and those who knew Syed, ‘nothing indicated ... any violence in the past or anything of that nature,’ he said.
Syed was unemployed and enrolled in one computer class at Saddleback College, authorities said. He had no criminal record.
There were also no drugs found in Syed’s room, Amormino said, though toxicology results were still pending.
Amormino also identified the woman shot and killed at Syed’s home as Courtney Aoki, 20, of Buena Park.
Despite rumors that she might be employed as a stripper, Amormino said investigators have not confirmed that and said they are still trying to determine her occupation, how she met Syed and why she was at his home.
‘There’s still a lot of work to do in this case,’ Amormino said.
Amormino said an autopsy determined Syed died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. The weapon was a 12-gauge shotgun.
Aoki was shot multiple times, authorities said.
Detectives had difficult identifying her, Amormino said, because she had no identification with her and no vehicle at the Ladera Ranch residence. There were no missing persons reports and the first set of fingerprints taken yielded no results.
Amormino said Aoki was identified Wednesday morning after taking a second set of fingerprints, but authorities were not able to locate her mother until about 2:30 p.m. Although Aoki’s mother also lives in Orange County, Aoki did not live with her, Amormino said.
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— Kate Mather
