Officer Max Moreno of the Tehama County Sheriff’s Office said Wednesday morning that Maes has been released from the county jail.
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Lara’s wife, Bend police officer Isabel Ponce-Lara, told Redmond police he was acting strangely Sunday after work and that she questioned him the next morning, according to court records.
While on the lam southbound into California, Lara is suspected of shooting an elderly man in the stomach at a Super 8 motel in Yreka early Tuesday.
All charges have been dropped against a young OR woman arrested in Northern California with a wanted OR man after a shooting and kidnapping rocked a small town, authorities said Wednesday. Lara also reportedly confessed that he panicked after the accident and hid Sawyer’s body in an undisclosed location, putting some of her belongings in their shed. Bowles said Lara kidnapped the family and forced a male family member to drive at gunpoint along Interstate 5. He was taken to a hospital and was in stable condition Wednesday.
On Monday, Bend police said the case had become a homicide investigation and they were looking for Edwin Lara as a person of interest. A medical examiner would confirm the identity, he said. Then, five minutes after the shooting, another man reported to police that his vehicle had been stolen with three of his family members inside across the street from the motel. They say an autopsy revealed 23-year-old Kaylee Sawyer died of blunt-force trauma.
Lara’s wife is being praised for immediately alerting police of the threat posed by her husband. The mother and two sons were later dropped off at a rest stop along the interstate about 30 miles south of Yreka, near the town of Weed.
During a widespread search, police said they were led on a chase going speeds more than 100 miles per hour on Interstate 5 and were able to arrest Lara along with an OR woman who was also in the vehicle north of Redding, California.
“We have got crime scenes at a motel, a gas station and in Red Bluff more than 100 miles away”, Bowles said.
Lara had worked as a part-time public safety officer at Central Oregon Community College since December 2014, said Ron Paradis, executive director of college relations.
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“We’re feeling good about where we are in the investigation”, Hummel said.
Ponce-Lara told police her husband had family in Los Angeles and may have been heading there.
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Mourners were expected to hold a vigil Tuesday night to remember Sawyer, Hummel said.
