Heart Donor : Police Seek Witnesses in Slaying

Costa Mesa police, saying they have been stymied in the investigation, Tuesday asked for the public for help in finding the person who fatally bludgeoned a 19-year-old Costa Mesa man whose heart was used April 20 in the county’s second heart transplant.

Detectives said they are continuing to seek witnesses to the murder of Eleno Ullua Ramirez, a restaurant worker. They are also seeking friends who may know where the victim was during the eight hours before he was found unconscious in front of a Costa Mesa convenience store at 5 a.m. April 19.

“We’ve haven’t been able to find his real friends who may have known where he was in the last hours before his death,” Costa Mesa Police Detective Sam Zuorsky said. “He didn’t have many of them (close friends) because he was a loner. But we know he had some. We just haven’t been able to track them down.”

Ullua was found unconscious with severe head injuries on the sidewalk outside a Circle K market in the 1900 block of Pomona Street in Costa Mesa about 5 a.m. April 19. He had no identification and $9.14 in cash in his pockets, police said.

Although he had not yet been identified, Ullua’s heart was transplanted into a critically ill Fountain Valley doctor after surgeons at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian determined that the young man was brain-dead.

The taking of organs from an unidentified body for transplant is legal in California after a “diligent search” for at least 24 hours to locate next of kin and identify the potential donor.

Officials for the Newport Beach hospital said Tuesday that heart transplant recipient Dr. Norton Humphreys, 58, was in good condition.

Ullua was positively identified early April 22, after a hospital employee contacted Ullua’s sister, Maria Celsa Torres of Costa Mesa, to say that the unidentified man might have been her missing brother.

Police said Ullua was known to frequent at least two separate bars and had been seen at a bar near his Costa Mesa apartment about 1:30 a.m. on April 18, the day before he was found unconscious. The bar, Ullua’s apartment and the convenience store are all within a few blocks of each other, Zuorsky said.

Since Ullua was not a stranger to the area, Zuorsky said it is puzzling that no one has come forward who might have seen him in the eight hours before he was struck in the head with what is believed to have been a blunt instrument and found sprawled in front of the convenience store.

But he added that prospective witnesses may be hesitant to come forward because many in the heavily Latino neighborhood of sprawling apartment complexes are believed to be illegal aliens, Zuorsky said.

Costa Mesa police said Tuesday that they are particularly interested in talking to people who may have seen Ullua during the eight hours from 10 p.m. April 18, when he left his father’s apartment in the 1700 block of Temple Street in Anaheim, to dawn the next morning.

Zuorsky said police believe that Ullua left his father’s home and returned to his apartment in Costa Mesa, where his car was found parked in the garage and his wallet was found locked in his apartment.

“We are asking the public to come forward with information they may have that could help solve this crime,” Zuorsky said. “We believe that there are people out there who can keep us from running into the dead alleys we’ve found ourselves in the last few days.”

Ullua was a Latino, 5 feet, 6 inches tall, weighing 143 pounds, with black hair, hazel eyes and a mustache, Zuorsky said.

Anyone with information about the case is asked to call Costa Mesa police at (714) 754-5205.