Irvine Police Arrest Man, 80, in Mystery Death of Roommate

An 80-year-old man was arrested Thursday on suspicion of murdering his roommate, a 74-year-old woman, in their mobile home in a well-manicured Irvine trailer park.

Irvine Police Lt. Mike White said investigators are unsure whether Josephine Chouinard’s death was a suicide or a homicide. Neighbors said that Chouinard was ill and that the couple had been keeping to themselves lately.

Hugh Mack Coker was taken to the Irvine Police Department, but no charges have been filed against him, White said. Coker was later released to his daughter, police said.

Chouinard and Coker had been living together for 13 years but were unmarried, police said.

One Bullet Wound

White said that there was one small bullet wound in her head and that investigators found a .22-caliber handgun in the mobile home in the Meadows Mobile Home Park, 14851 Jeffrey Road.

The police received a phone call from the suspect’s daughter, who reportedly owns the mobile home, at about 3 a.m. Thursday, White said. Officers went to the scene and found Chouinard dead, stretched out on her bed with blood on her pillow.

Chouinard may have been dead for several hours at that point, he said.

Officers arrested Coker, who was at the mobile home when they arrived, 1 1/2 hours later.

But police are having difficulty determining how the death occurred.

“Coker seemed rational, but some of the things he was saying were questionable,” Investigator Pete Linton said. He declined to elaborate

White said that Coker’s answers to questions were inconsistent and that he couldn’t remember certain details about what happened.

“At this point we are unsure whether we have a suicide or a homicide,” said White, adding that police will have to wait for laboratory results of gunshot residues.

Search Warrant Obtained

White said Coker did not object to being taken away and did not refuse the police entrance into the house, but he said police obtained a search warrant Thursday afternoon to be “safe.”

A man who identified himself as Chouinard’s son, Robert, of Irvine sat in his car near the mobile home Thursday but declined to comment.

Residents on Jacaranda Street, mostly elderly people taking afternoon strolls at the quiet mobile home park, said they had not heard gunshots that morning.

“She’s been very sick,” said Bob Schurb, 85, on his daily walk. “He wasn’t a very sociable man.”

One neighbor across the street, Ina La Bella, 70, said both Chouinard and Coker had poor vision and wouldn’t leave the house much. She said she chatted with them occasionally on their front porch.

La Bella, who worked in the records department at the Irvine Police Department for 15 years until 1985, called them “delightful people.”

“She used to go for walks and wore a big straw hat,” she said. La Bella also said that in his youth Coker worked overseas, but she didn’t know in what capacity.

Coker was a “hard” man and often used obscenities that would embarrass his roommate, La Bella said.

“He was a rugged individual. . . . He had a rough exterior but was a good person.”

About four years ago, Chouinard broke her hip. Soon after she returned from the hospital, she sat down in a chair in the large trailer and the hip broke again.

At that point, La Bella said, “She was afraid to sit down anymore--she stood up or lay down.”

La Bella said that she hadn’t seen the couple for a while, but then in the last few weeks when she met Coker a few times by chance when taking out her trash or picking up her mail, she noticed he was depressed.

“It’s just been in the last few weeks that I’ve noticed his mood changed,” she said. “He would pour his heart out to me about Jo,” as friends referred to Chouinard.

“ ‘Here we are again,’ he would say, ‘I don’t know what it’s all about. Life isn’t worth living any more.’ ”