‘Safe’ Irvine Again Forced to Grapple With Violent Crime

Greg Fox couldn’t believe that a grisly murder could happen on his quiet, tree-lined block, especially to someone like his next-door neighbor, whom he had watched grow into a friendly and cautious college student.

He has spent most of his life in this master-planned community precisely because it prides itself on being one of the safest cities in the United States.

“This is crazy. I lived in Venice for a year. There were gunshots all night and helicopters flying overhead,” said the 27-year-old photographer, sitting on the steps outside his home on Blazing Star. “I got out of there. But this is Irvine. This is Orange County. This stuff shouldn’t be happening here.”

But this stuff has become too frequent lately.

In April, a businessman was killed outside his Woodbridge townhome, witnesses said, by two men who beat him with their guns and tried to force him into the trunk of a Lexus before shooting him. Police soon named a parolee and former temporary employee of the victim, 30-year-old Gregory Hebdon, and a second man as suspects in the killing. The second man has been arrested.

Then this summer, the body of an Irvine woman, whose husband said she disappeared from their home in the middle of the night, was found tossed down a road embankment in a remote section of east San Diego County just hours after she was reported missing. Carolyn Rodrick, 35, had been strangled.

The latest violence in this community of more than 120,000 occurred Thursday when the owner of an Irvine upholstery shop found his 18-year-old daughter, Linda Young Park, bound and covered with blood in the middle of the family’s living room.

“It’s really a shame,” Mayor Michael Ward said Friday. “You can have a very safe community, but unfortunately things like this do happen. I’m just sorry that it happened. I know our Police Department is hard at work on it.”

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While just one murder a year is too much, Ward stressed that Irvine’s violent crime rate is still exceptionally low for the city’s size.

Last year, Money Magazine named Irvine the safest large city in the country in terms of violent crime. That designation came just weeks after the FBI released statistics which showed Irvine to be the seventh-safest city in the United States with a population over 100,000.

Both rankings were based on 1993 statistics, a year in which Irvine had one homicide victim. That was Turtle Rock resident Patricia Lea Pratt, who apparently surprised an intruder in her home. Police later arrested an 18-year-old high school student on suspicion of homicide and burglary.

Residents in the tight-knit neighborhood where Young was killed said it might be a while before they feel safe again.

“This is insane,” said Matthew Bern, a student at Irvine Valley College, who was shocked to come home Thursday night to find his street cordoned off. “I don’t know what to think. How could this happen?”

Added Marilyn Fox, as she planned a platter of food to take to her grieving neighbors, “It’s overwhelming that something like this could happen here. There’s just no way to make sense of this.”