Siblings Get Permission to Claim Body of Sniper Victim

The brother and sister of Juan Pedro Trujillo, who was shot to death Sunday by a sniper on the Santa Ana Freeway, received permission Tuesday to claim the body after county officials decided to make an exception in their case.

Family members in Anaheim had not been allowed to see Trujillo’s body or make funeral arrangements because the Orange County coroner’s office had said that only Trujillo’s next of kin--in this case, his parents in Mexico--could sign a release for his body.

But on Tuesday, the coroner’s office asked the Orange County public administrator to make an exception, because the parents live in a remote village in central Mexico, said William King, supervising investigator in the coroner’s office.

‘Have to Compromise’

“We do our best to deal directly with the next of kin,” he said. “Of course, we have to compromise sometimes. When a fax or a telegram is not expedient, the public administrator will give permission.

“We realize that some of these people live in remote areas. It’s not uncommon.”

The family said Monday that they were confused by the bureaucracy surrounding Trujillo’s death. But more than anything, they did not understand why they could not see his body or claim it for burial.

King said he tried to explain to the family on Sunday that the coroner’s office routinely keeps a body involved in a homicide for 48 hours to perform forensics tests. He also said families are not allowed to view the body at this time because of the investigators’ work and because there are no viewing facilities at the coroner’s office.

But he conceded that on the question of the next of kin, it is the coroner’s responsibility to make the request to the public administrator, and that was not done until Tuesday.

Guillermo Trujillo, 19, was allowed to sign a release Tuesday that will allow the family to begin funeral arrangements for his brother, who was 22.

Carmen Zaragoza, Trujillo’s sister, said a woman from the Mexican Consulate in Santa Ana called the family Tuesday, asking if they needed help in getting a release for the body from the coroner’s office, and suggesting a less expensive funeral home.

“All I have been able to do is cry and think about this,” Zaragoza said. “There is no consolation.

“I asked my brother’s co-workers if he had had any trouble with anyone,” she said. “They said he was a good man. . . . They asked me if I remembered what had happened in 1987, with all those other freeway shootings. I do remember; I lived here then. They said maybe it is going to start happening again.

“This has no explanation. We just keep turning it over in our minds.”

Trujillo was returning home from a restaurant at about 3:45 a.m. near the northbound Chapman Avenue exit in Orange when someone in a car fired several rounds from a semiautomatic assault rifle at his truck. Authorities said Tuesday that they have no solid leads to the killer.

Zaragoza said she has lived in Orange County seven years and that her brother had lived here four years. He left Mexico to pick strawberries in Chicago but soon came to live with Zaragoza and her husband, Juan, and their children.

“When he was over there (in Chicago), my husband said, ‘Tell him to come over here; I don’t want him over there by himself.’ So I sent him money so he could come back here with us,” she said. That was in June, 1985.

She said the family had planned to return to their hometown in December because Trujillo was going to marry a woman from that town.

“He had already asked for her hand,” she said. “He was going to marry her in a civil ceremony, then he wanted to return here to work and earn some more money so that they could have a church wedding later. But, well, God did not permit him this.”