Woman Found Dead in Orange After Leaving Club; Man Sought

The body of a Huntington Beach woman who was last seen early Friday at a nightclub in Orange was discovered brutally beaten a few hours later in a parking lot across the street, police said.

The coroner’s office said Lenora Annette Wong, 23, died of injuries to the head, neck and pelvis.

Police said Wong and a female friend had gone to the Australian Beach Restaurant and Nightclub on Metropolitan Drive on Thursday night to dance.

Each promised that they would not leave without the other, Orange Police Sgt. Timm Browne said. But Wong was seen leaving the club about 1 a.m. with a man whom her friend and others described as a “bodybuilder type,” Browne said.

Soon after, Wong’s friend looked for her and then reported her missing to the Santa Ana Police Department, Browne said.

About 3 a.m., a security guard at Bergen Brunswig Corp. found Wong’s body in the building’s parking lot, inside a blood-spattered shed, Browne said.

Police said the man who left the club with Wong is white and in his mid-20s. He is about 5 feet 8, 200 pounds, and has a stocky build. He has short hair with medium-length sideburns and wore a gold hoop earring in the left ear.

Police are asking anyone who was at the club Thursday night or early Friday who may have seen something to call (714) 744-7520.

Employees at a nearby mall said the commercial-industrial area has become dangerous lately.

In February, an unarmed security guard at the Century City Centre Theatres next door to the nightclub was shot to death by a 19-year-old man in what a police official described as a “most senseless” act.

The victim, Dagoberto R. Carrero, a 23-year-old former Marine, was killed on his last day as security guard at the theater in a confrontation with the teen-ager, police said.

Soon after his arrest, Jerry Lee Alonzo Jr. admitted killing Carrero, police said.