A district attorney says an OR man arrested in California has been charged with murder in the killing of a woman from the central OR town of Bend. Later that morning, California Highway Patrol found the stolen vehicle and arrested Lara north of Redding, police said.
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Sawyer was walking from her home toward campus, police said. The victim was taken to Rogue Valley Medical Center in critical and unstable condition, Bowles said.
A man and a woman from OR are in custody after an elderly man was shot and critically wounded and a mother and her two sons were driven away at gunpoint in a carjacking.
The arrested man was being sought in the disappearance of a woman from Oregon. “Edwin Lara has been identified as a person of interest in this case”.
On Monday, police in Bend, Oregon, a town in the shadow of the Cascade Range, had said they were looking for Lara as a “person of interest” in the disappearance of Kaylee Sawyer, 23, of Bend.
Article is invalid or is no longer published.. The Bend Bulletin reports that Lara was taken into custody on I-5 near Redding, California, at around 7 a.m. on Tuesday.
The man was shot at the hotel about 5 a.m. and called 911, police said in a news release.
Deschutes County District Attorney John Hummel speaks during a press conference on the search for Kaylee Sawyer on Tuesday, July 26, 2016, at the Deschutes County Courthouse in Bend, Oregon.
Bend police Lt. Clint Burleigh told KTVZ NewsChannel 21 Monday night, “Information gathered by investigators during the day has changed the type of investigation from a missing person to a homicide investigation”.
The mayhem in the former gold-mining town of Yreka started near dawn Tuesday when a man was shot in the stomach at the Super 8 Motel and critically wounded.
Police officers, Yreka CHP and Siskiyou County Sheriff’s deputies searched the area for the suspects, Bowles said. Five minutes later, a man at a Yreka gas station reportedly said his vehicle was taken at gunpoint with his wife and two sons still inside.
Lara was a part-time employee of the college employed on a week-to-week basis, according to Ron Paradis, director of college relations. Police haven’t explained Lara’s alleged connection to the case. Yreka Police Chief Brian Bowles said Lara forced one of the man’s sons to drive at gunpoint. At 5:41 a.m., a call was received by the family members who said they had been dropped off on I-5 north of the Weed rest area and were unharmed.
By Monday, police identified Lara as a person of interest, and warned the public that he was likely armed and unsafe.
Meantime, dozens filled Discovery Park in OR to remember Kaylee Sawyer.
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“The man had come out of the gas station to see his dog running around and his auto gone”, Yreka Police Chief Brian Bowles told The Associated Press.
