Investigators believe Haobsh, an associate of Dr. Weidong Henry Han, may have killed the clinician’s family over a contentious business transaction.
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The “horrific” slaying of a practitioner of Chinese herbal medicine, his wife and their 5-year-old daughter in their California home does not appear to be random, authorities said. He called the investigation “complex and ongoing”. The associates called authorities when they found the front door ajar and the family’s cars parked outside.
A loaded 9-millimeter handgun and property belonging to the victims were found in Haobsh’s vehicle at the time of his arrest, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday. ‘They had been duct-taped over the plastic wrap and they were all in the garage of the residence’. Irma Russell collected the flowers and arranged them on a table, creating a memorial for a man who touched many in Santa Barbara. The website says he practiced traditional Chinese medicine, including herbal treatments and acupuncture. Detectives are still investigating the motive for the killings, which they said may have been financial.
“You just knew he was going to fix it”, Russell, 71, said.
According to the Los Angeles Times, one of Dr. Han’s patients, Ron Rakow, 78, spoke highly of the doctor.
“His life was solving insolvable problems”, said Rakow, who suffers from an incurable lung disorder and has breathing problems.
The couple’s daughter was a kindergartener at Foothill Elementary School in the Goleta Unified School District, where counselors were made available to her classmates and their parents.
“This is a sacred place where people come here broken and get fixed”, Rakow said, adding that he was heartbroken to learn of the family’s death. Their daughter would have turned 6 on Saturday.
In 2014, Foothill Elementary School student Vincent Holzer, 10, his brother, Sebastian, and the boys’ grandparents were all stabbed to death by Vincent’s father, Nicholas Holzer, KEYT reports.
A bio on his website says he earned degrees in Oriental and Western medicine from a Beijing university in 1982, graduating at the top of his class. He moved to the USA a few years later to study psychology.
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He is co-author of the book “Ancient Herbs, Modern Medicine” and was working on a volume about how to integrate Chinese and Western medicine. “Words can not begin to express the deep sadness that has overcome us”.
