According to NBC News, LAPD Chief Michel Moore said that the murders occurred in the early morning hours of Sunday, Monday and Wednesday.
Chief Moore also stated that all three victims were men that were sleeping alone in open areas, such as sidewalks or alleyways.
Late Saturday night, the LAPD arrested Jerrid Joseph Powell, 33, in connections to those slayings.
According to ABC News, Powell was already in custody, being charged with an unrelated homicide. In that case, he allegedly followed his victim home to rob them.
Powell was identified as the person involved only a day after the city went public with the news of the murders being carried out in the homeless community.
"Twenty-four hours ago, we announced there was a killer on the loose. Now he is in custody," Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said.
According to LAPD Chief Michel Moore, Powell's car was seen in the vicinity of all three homeless murders. A handgun found in his car was also identified as the one used in all three killings as well as the previously mentioned "follow-home" murder.
Authorities believe that Powell may be responsible for other unsolved robberies and murders in the greater LA area, given that three of the deaths occurred in downtown LA, while the fourth was in San Dimas, nearly 30 miles away. Moore said he doubts that Powell's criminal activity just started last Sunday.
"I'm highly suspicious of that. I don't see how when you look at the sequence of accounts in four days, four individuals are brutally murdered, and the manner in which they occurred. I'm highly suspicious that this did not start just Sunday morning, less than a week ago," Chief Moore said.
The man he followed home was a 42-year-old father of two.
Powell was picked up following a traffic stop that resulted from his 2024 BMW hitting the registry in a license plate recognition system in Beverly Hills. While the technology deployed there has been the center of controversy, Chief Moore praised the Beverly Hills PD for using the tools they have at their disposal to get an alleged murderer off the streets.
"Had they not had those access to those tools, this individual I am convinced would still be moving about the city, in the region, and killing individuals, innocent individuals, helpless individuals," the chief said.
Powell was arrested on Thursday for the San Dimas murder and was being held on $2.1M bond. It remains to be seen if that amount increases with the addition of the other three murder charges, or if the judge orders him held without bond.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department began circulating Powell's photo to the public. They are hoping that any potential victim's of other crimes committed by Powell will come forward and contact local law enforcement.
"Based on his criminal history, he didn't just start doing this a week ago. So, this is why we're using you (local media) as a partner to make sure that with his picture and this information, if anybody believes that they may have been a victim of a crime and this individual perpetrated it, you need to contact us right away," Sheriff Robert Luna told media outlets.
"Because at the end of the day," he said, "we want to make sure that if he did commit other crimes, that he's held accountable for each and every one of them."
The three homeless shootings took place over a 72-hour period, with the first occuring at approximately 3:oo am on Sunday. According to police, the 37-year-old man was asleep on a couch in an alley off 110th Street.
The second murder occured just before 5:00 am on East 7th Street. Chief Moore stated that a 62-year-old man had been pushing a shopping cart when he stopped to rest against a wall. A lone individual walked up and shot him.
Finally, a 52-year-old man was shot near an intersection. He was sleeping on a sidewalk at the time.
Comments
2023-12-10T14:37-0600 | Comment by: Rocco
This guy can't be the serial killer. Libs have been saying all along that serial killers were white men.