Police Identify Woman Killed in Shooting
The woman slain a day before she was to give birth was identified by police Wednesday as Jay Joan Pereleon.
Pereleon, who also went by the name Cook, was 37, police said. Previously, police had said she was 27.
Investigators said they were interviewing people close to Pereleon but did not have a prime suspect in the fatal shooting on Monday morning--a day before Pereleon was to give birth to her second child by Cesarean section.
It was Orange County’s first homicide in 1995.
Pereleon was shot several times in the head and abdomen about 70 yards from her apartment near West Crescent Avenue and Ventura Street. Her 6-year-old son, Jamie, was asleep in the apartment at the time of the slaying.
Neighbors said Pereleon was an unemployed secretary who was evicted from a neighboring apartment building about a month before her death because she could not pay the rent. Friends described her as a devoted mother who was trying hard to find work as a secretary.
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