70-year-old man shot dead at home

Marisa O’Neil

A man in his 70s was shot and killed in his Jasmine Circle home and

his stepson arrested on suspicion of murder Wednesday afternoon,

police said.

Costa Mesa Police received an anonymous call at about 12:30 p.m.

Wednesday asking officers to check on someone who might need help in

a home in the 900 block of Jasmine Circle, Sgt. Marty Carver said.

Officers got no response at the home and forced their way in.

When they got in the home, they found a man in his 70s, dead from

an apparent gunshot wound, Carver said.

The man’s identity had not been released as of press time.

At about the same time police were responding to the home, an

attorney for 50-year-old Dennis Thomas -- identified as the dead

man’s stepson -- called police, Carver said.

“We received a call from an attorney that the stepson had turned

himself in to the Orange County Sheriff,” Carver said.

Costa Mesa Police arrested Thomas on suspicion of killing the man,

Carver said. He is being held at the Costa Mesa Jail on $1-million

bail. Thomas had been living at the home with his stepfather, Carver

said.

The house sits at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac in a neighborhood

of well-kept single-family homes behind South Coast Plaza.

Hours after the initial call, the street remained closed off by

police as they continued their investigation. The red and blue

flashing lights of a patrol car and the looming neon of a nearby

movie theater marquee punctuated the early-evening twilight.

A few curious residents passed by to see what was going on.

One longtime resident on the street said the normally quiet

neighborhood has changed greatly over the years.

“I don’t even know my neighbors anymore,” she said.

Carl Margolis, another longtime resident who lives one street over

from the scene, stopped by in the early evening to see what had drawn

the police to the neighborhood and kept them there so long. Usually

the biggest problem they get around there, he said, is barking dogs.

“This is one of those things you don’t expect,” he said when he

learned of the shooting.

“This is one of those nothing-happens neighborhoods.”